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Berlin, Oct 6 (AFP): German FA director Oliver Bierhoff on Wednesday said he is opposed to the controversial idea of staging a World Cup every two years as FIFA’s proposed project receives a clear “nein” from Germany.<\/p>\n
“We always have to keep the strain on the players in mind,” Bierhoff, who is Germany team director, said at a press conference in Hamburg.<\/p>\n
“Playing a World Cup every two years? I haven’t found anyone yet who has said that’s a nice idea.”<\/p>\n
Germany are on course to play at next year’s World Cup in Qatar as they hold a four-point lead at the top of the qualifying group going into Friday’s qualifier against Romania in Hamburg.<\/p>\n
Bierhoff believes FIFA should focus less on “maximising revenue and more on quality assurance”.<\/p>\n
“It’s about us seeing great, passionate games. That is actually no longer possible with the tight schedule, both physically and mentally,” Bierhoff warned.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, world football’s governing body FIFA held an online summit with its 211 member federations in an attempt to rally support for the idea of a biennial World Cup.<\/p>\n
The concept has already met stiff resistance in Germany.<\/p>\n
Rainer Koch, interim president of the German Football Association (DFB) told Kicker he finds the proposal “not good for the future of football”.<\/p>\n
“Let’s continue to discuss improvements to the match calendar, but let’s not pursue the idea of a World Cup every two years,” he added.<\/p>\n
Likewise on Monday, Philipp Lahm, who lifted the World Cup trophy as captain of Germany in 2014, says the finals should “remain as it is” on a four-year cycle.<\/p>\n
“I am totally convinced that things should stay as they are,” added Lahm, 37, who is tournament director of the Euro 2024 finals which will be hosted by Germany.<\/p>\n
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Berlin, Oct 6 (AFP): German FA director Oliver Bierhoff on Wednesday said he is opposed to the controversial idea of staging a World Cup every two years as FIFA’s proposed project receives a clear “nein” from Germany. “We always have to keep the strain on the players in mind,” Bierhoff, who is Germany team director, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-173589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}