FIFA president Gianni Infantino believes a “majority” of countries would be in favour of biennial World Cups if he called a snap vote.
The leaders of 207 national federations were told on Monday that switching to World Cups every two years would increase revenues by 4.4 billion US dollars (£3.3bn) across a four-year cycle.
The hugely controversial proposal is part of wider reform of the international calendar put forward by FIFA. Infantino and FIFA’s chief of global football development Arsene Wenger hope the new calendar from 2024 will create more meaningful national team football globally and bridge the financial gap between Europe and the rest of the world.
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Infantino continues to hope a consensus can be reached on all the components of a new calendar, which seems optimistic given the fierce opposition to the plans in Europe and South America.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has previously said European countries could boycott the World Cup if it was staged every two years, and the confederation is already planning for Euros in 2028 and 2032 which would clash with World Cups under FIFA’s proposals.
However, FIFA president Infantino is already confident there is support for increasing the frequency of World Cups if that single issue was put to a vote of all the national associations.
“If I was going to a (Congress) vote tomorrow probably the majority would vote in favour of World Cups every two years,” he said.
“But we are looking at the entire calendar. We are looking at how we can make football better and we’re looking at how many we can bring on board with a new way of organising football in the future.
“We continue the dialogue, we continue the analysis, we hope that we can make progress one way or the other, or some middle way.”
Six Premier League games were postponed over the weekend as a result of outbreaks of the virus at clubs.
It has previously been reported that it was under consideration to cancel the scheduled games for December 28 to December 30.
However, following a shareholders’ meeting involving representatives of the 20 clubs on Monday, it has been reported (via PA) that a decision has been taken to continue with the season as planned, and that any decisions to postpone individual matches will continue to be taken by the Premier League board on a case-by-case basis.
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