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Author: Will Butterworth, Frequent Contributor

International football has become dull and boring: the international break is now an inconvenience to football fans everywhere, a two-week absence of the high quality football we are used to seeing in the Premier League and other top European leagues.

Anyone who watched England’s recent qualifying matches against Slovenia and Malta can testify to the declining quality of international football. It is not just the qualification games that have become boring – the championships have too. In the championships, you want to see the big countries face off against each other, but the new format of the Euros, introduced last summer, stopped that. The tournament was expanded to 24 teams, 8 more than previously. This meant that fans were forced to watch matches like Albania v. Romania, when really what they wanted to watch was England v. France.

International football is no longer something to look forward to. Not that long ago, an impending major tournament would be the biennial highlight on the football calendar. However, you don’t see exciting football any longer, just Championship-standard football by teams that have been cobbled together in a few days of training.

There used to be a buzz around international tournaments and England games. One of the highlights of David Beckham’s career was a goal he scored in a qualification game, a last minute free-kick against Greece that sent England into the 2002 World Cup. The low point of his career was arguably also in an England shirt, when he kicked out at Diego Simeone when playing Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. However, I do not think that for the next generation of footballers, international football will be as important as it has been.

I have a three-part solution to this plan. First, the creation of two international breaks at the start and end of the season. Second, the creation of a two-tier qualification system. Third, the continuation of the World Cup in its current format and the reversion of the European Championships to the previous 16 team format.

There should be two longer international breaks at the beginning and the end of the season. International breaks are currently a week and a half long and intermittent throughout the season. This is not a format conducive to high quality football. The international team managers only have a few days of preparation with their squads before a match in an international break. This means they have very little time to actually coach their teams.

More training over an extended period of time will mean that international teams will be better managed and more organised than they are currently. You can think of it by comparing a manager who has had a whole pre-season with their players against a manager who has been parachuted in as a replacement at the last minute. The manager with a full pre-season has had more opportunity to organise and prepare his team and is therefore more likely to produce a better team.

Secondly, the inclusion of the small teams in qualification is ridiculous. For example, San Marino have won only one of their 137 matches; Andorra have only won one professional game too and yet they are still allowed to participate in qualification. These teams have no hope of qualifying for the main competitions and they are threatening the international game. If you ask any football fan if they would rather see a competitive Premier League game or a one-sided qualification game against Malta, you will only get one answer.

The Premier League is the most watched league in the world primarily because it is competitive and therefore exciting. Too many matches in international football are uncompetitive and as a result unexciting. You would go a long way to making international football more exciting if you cut out the lower ranked countries and make them have to qualify to get into the first tier of qualification, where the big countries are.

Lastly, the World Cup and the Euros should remain as small tournaments – small meaning less teams being involved. The election process in the football governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA, has influenced the size of tournaments. Every country having one vote means that candidates for senior leadership positions have incentives to appeal to more countries’ delegations, and by expanding tournaments they are doing just that. This is at the expense of the quality of football.

The Euros this year has to rank as the worst major tournament I have ever watched (I have watched a lot of football). So many unimportant games between so many poor teams, as a result of the fact that almost every team got past the group stages. The fact that a failed Swansea City striker scored the winning goal in the final, with the score at 0-0, rather summed up the tournament. It was full of poor spectacles and poor quality football. By limiting the number of teams involved, you are more likely to have higher quality and more entertaining matches.

These proposals would revitalise the international game by increasing its quality and competitiveness. However, the sad truth is that the politics of football means that there is no chance that any of these suggestions will be implemented. They do not listen to anyone unless they are Qatari and have millions of pounds, so they certainly won’t listen to me: a poor LSE student, but at least I’m a football fan, which is perhaps not something you can say for those running international football currently.

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