International Olympic Committee expresses concern over FIFA plan to hold World Cup every two years

Forward of the 2022 World Cup, FIFA has made main waves within the worldwide soccer panorama by revealing a plan to carry the World Cup biennially, which might make the event an each two-year affair as an alternative of each 4. Nonetheless, FIFA’s plan isn’t with out opposition, together with from one other worldwide sports activities group.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Worldwide Olympic Committee introduced that they help the requires a “wider session” into FIFA’s biennial World Cup plan, citing reservations and considerations stemming from three main elements.

The IOC argued that the elevated frequency and timing of the World Cup would “would undermine the variety and improvement of sports activities apart from soccer”, specifically a number of Olympic sports activities like tennis, biking, golf, and gymnastics in addition to Method 1 racing. The IOC additionally instructed that the rise in males’s soccer occasions would create gender equality challenges in additional selling ladies’s soccer, in addition to the bodily and psychological well being pressure on gamers of extra frequent World Cups.

“The IOC shares these considerations and helps the calls of stakeholders of soccer, Worldwide Sports activities Federations and main occasion organisers for a wider session, together with with athletes’ representatives, which has clearly not taken place,” learn a part of the assertion by the group.

FIFA’s biennial plan has develop into a significant level of competition not solely with different sports activities organizations, however with soccer golf equipment and federations as effectively. According to an Associated Press report, the European Membership Affiliation has criticized FIFA for a scarcity of engagement on the brand new worldwide match calendar from 2024, lambasting FIFA’s launch of PR campaigns associated to the plan as “apparently in search of to railroad by reforms to the IMC, notably the introduction of a biennial World Cup.”

Plans to double the frequency of the World Cup have been gaining momentum since Might, when Saudi Arabia’s federation proposed at FIFA’s congress to discover biennial World Cups.