The two weeks of purgatory, otherwise known as the international break, are now at an end. Even a poor result – drawing with the 40th best team in the world at home – has not injected even a scintilla of uncertainty into England’s prospects of World Cup qualification.
It is emblematic of a wider malaise: the stakes are too low for too often in international football. For all the tension over whether Wales and Scotland can qualify for the World Cup, international football is damaged by heavyweight nations having scarcely any matches of consequence between tournaments.
While international football is played out to much apathy, The International is concluding this week. It is an extraordinary phenomenon – teams from across the world competing with each other in the online multiplayer video game Dota, in a tournament in Bucharest, with $40 million in prize money at stake.
But what is most interesting, for international football’s purposes, is the structure of The International. The leading sides in the groups had to win only two more matches to reach the final, while the next batch had to win four. The structure maximises interest in the group stages – what matters is not merely whether you qualify, but where – while ensuring enough knockout matches.
These are simple principles that international football fails to embrace. Instead, qualification for the World Cup continues to use an antiquated model, with teams seeded into groups in a way that guarantees the mundanity of England playing San Marino and Andorra.
The International provides a hint about a better way. So do other sporting competitions: as far back as 2011, the Indian Premier League ditched traditional semi-finals in favour of a play-off system. The top two teams only have to win one out of two matches to reach the final; the third and fourth-placed teams have to win two matches, rewarding group performances while still being easy to understand.
A well-designed sporting competition makes compelling sport more likely, by producing more moments of jeopardy and minimising inconsequential games. Naturally, the reverse is also true: South Africa lost three matches in the first week of the 2019 Cricket World Cup and were effectively eliminated, yet still had to traipse around for another six games.
International football has been lamentably slow in embracing reform, although the Nations League, launched in 2018, has been a success. But the essential problem with qualification for tournaments – it is too long and drawn-out, and contains too few high-octane moments – remains. With the European Championship now 24 teams, and Europe’s representation at the World Cup rising from 13 to 16 teams from 2026, the problems are only becoming more acute.
A more dynamic structure could reinvigorate international qualification. Rather than disperse teams between ten different groups, countries could initially be placed in one of three divisions. In the current cycle, this could entail four groups of four in division one, with the top two teams in each group – eight in all – securing World Cup qualification.
The final five berths could then be determined by a play-off system involving the lowest teams in division one and leading sides from the second and third divisions. Such a format would have more matches that matter, more games between evenly matched teams, and – crucially – still allow a golden generation to lift a small nation to qualification, as happened with Iceland. The Nations League could well ultimately be a precursor to a similar system being introduced.
Unpalatable as it may be, there is a simple lesson for international football from The International. Sports need not be wedded to traditional ways of running competitions. A little creativity and ingenuity in designing a tournament can lead to more captivating sport.
