The case of Charleroi, a Belgian football club, versus FIFA has opened a can of worms regarding the importance of international football. It is no secret that international football is losing out to club football slowly but steadily. If the landmark case goes in favour of Charleroi, it could hasten the inevitable.

The whole issue of who owns international footballers crops up. A country shouldn’t have less right to it’s footballer than a club and have to compensate the club if a player gets injured playing for the country (of course, that the player wants to play for his country and has not signed agreements with the club restricting his free will is a given). For instance, the country wouldn’t harm the player intentionally as more often than not they would have to use the player in future matches as well.

The bigger problem lies with the lack of competitive matches we see in international football today. A case in point are the Euro qualifiers. A lot of mismatches which could have been avoided if minnows were required to qualify for the qualifiers themselves. Moreover, it would give international football much more respect as you would expect a particular high standard from the matches and not have players playing in their first or second gears.

International football is still a huge draw. People often tune in to football only once in four years during the world cup and newer audiences are attracted to the game. There is little doubt that it is important to football at large. Traditionalists would even argue that international football should always be and be regarded above club football. However, it has to improve it’s stand in the form of public sentiment much more to remain a big force. Here’s hoping that international football lives long and has sound health for many years.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.