"Do not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs": Blanquer opposed to a World Cup football every two years

Arsène Wenger obviously did not convince Jean-Michel Blanquer.

The Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports opposed this Friday to the project carried by the former manager of Arsenal, now director of the development of world football at Fifa, of a world every two years.

In line with the world of European sport, widely opposed to this increase in the number of Worlds which could be appropriate from 2026.

“That there is an economic dimension to sport, no one denies it.

But you have to be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, as in the fable.

By dint of wanting to get as much money as possible from everything, we end up killing it, underlined the minister, the risk of increasing the competitions to multiply the TV rights is to undermine the health of the athletes and also to devalue the thing. .

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"We would lose something magical"

“In the case of the World Cup, we would lose something magical by scheduling it every two years.

The compass for decisions should not be money, ”he insisted.

Present at his side for their common back-to-school press conference, the Minister for Sports Roxana Maracineanu underlined the importance of "preserving the rarity of sports performances".

Already unsuccessfully issued in the 1990s, the idea of ​​a biennial World Cup was resuscitated in early March by Arsène Wenger, the director of development within Fifa, on the front line this week to defend this proposal.

But nobody believes in the isolated initiative: at the end of May, the world body launched a "feasibility study" suggested by the Saudi federation, close to the president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino.

And the Italian-Swiss leader said he was open to "everything" to reform the calendar, posing as a single bulwark against inequalities in football.

He promised that Fifa would make a decision on the matter before the end of the year.

UEFA threatens to boycott future event

On Monday, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin assured that a World Cup every two years "would dilute" this "jewel" of football, whose unparalleled appeal is based on its unchanging quadrennial rhythm since 1930 for men and 1991 for men. the women.

He also threatened a boycott of the future event by the European federations.

The European Club Association (ECA), for its part, felt that there was "no room" in the current calendar for a final phase each year, specifying that it had not received "any concrete proposal" from Fifa to discuss it.

Finally, the World League Forum (WLF) on Wednesday promised to "oppose" such a project, which serves the "short-term interests" of Fifa to the detriment of "the economy of football and the health of players ”.