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Arsene Wenger hints at more winter World Cups but backtracks on biennial suggestion.
While ideas to hold the World Cup every two years appear to have been discarded, Arsene Wenger feels the Qatar World Cup has demonstrated that the event can be successfully hosted in the winter.
When it was announced in 2015 that the competition would move from its customary summer schedule to the winter, there was a backlash. FIFA felt, however, that due to the heat, it was unsafe to hold matches in Qatar during the summer.
The move may have caused domestic European leagues some scheduling issues, but the tournament hasn’t suffered as a result; FIFA president Gianni Infantino even dubbed the group stage the “greatest ever.”
Wenger, the former manager of Arsenal and current head of FIFA’s global football development, has now hinted that there might be additional winter World Cups in the future, particularly if the competition returns to Africa.
‘If we want to democratise football, we will have to go to African countries where it is impossible to play a World Cup in the summer,’ the Frenchman told L’Equipe.
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‘We can see it with this edition in Qatar, a World Cup in the winter works.
‘Of course, many players did not have the usual time to prepare physically but at least they all approached this competition with real mental freshness, which has not always been the case in the past.
‘I remember teams starting a World Cup psychologically tired because their preparation period had gone badly.’
Last year, Wenger backed plans to stage the World Cup every two years as part of a total revamp of the international calendar, though he has now backtracked on that suggestion and says a biennial tournament is no longer on FIFA’s agenda.
‘I had been asked to think about it and I thought it was not a bad idea,’ he continued.
‘But such a change would have required a complete review of the qualifying calendar.
‘We are not heading towards that today, but rather towards four-year cycles alternating with a World Cup, the Women’s World Cup – which is becoming more and more important – and the Euros.’