Blatter's dubious masterplan

If, or when, FIFA president Sepp Blatter gets his way, domestic football in England will become harmonised with the rest of the world, bringing a stagnant and somewhat uninspiring symmetry to the global game.

Gone will be the local idiosyncrasies of soccer. For instance, the FA will, next month, finally bow to pressure and scrap the two-week gap before a suspension comes into force and fall into line after much moaning from Blatter.

He has long been a campaigner for a reduction in domestic games, no doubt to make it easier for him to push his own interests - namely in the form of the white elephant that is the World Club Championship.

One of the main targets for his meddling ways is the FA Cup - only this week he has slammed the FA for persevering with replays. Over recent years penalties have been introduced and replays reduced to just one per tie, but Blatter would like to see the individuality of the tournament eroded completely.

The string of replays a tie could produce would capture the imagination - right down to the tossing of a coin for home advantage in the second replay. But Blatter has little room for sentiment - only his own ideas and schemes.

If Blatter gets his way, he'd see every league across Europe reduced to just 16 teams - but exactly how would he propose to do this?

Football across the continent is in such a dire state in financial terms that relegation from the top division can be catastrophic, and now Blatter wants to drop teams, four from most leagues, to suit his purpose.

The French FA has been discussing the number of teams in Ligue 1 for the past ten years. In 1997, they reduced the number of teams to 18, only to restore the figure to 20 for the 2002/03 campaign.

They are discussing a two-team reduction once again but, understandably, there is much consternation among smaller clubs about the financial pit-falls of being forced to play in the second rung. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, as the saying goes.

Blatter himself has admitted that it will be hard to simply bully national associations into his way of thinking - even if that was pretty much the way he acted in the Rio Ferdinand drug test fiasco.

Instead, this coming May, he will seek a mandate from the 204 national associations to allow FIFA's strategic committee to look into the issue and report back to the 2005 congress.

Rather than impose a limit on the size of leagues, the committee would appear likely to recommend a maximum of 45 domestic matches in a season.

Despite all Blatter's huffing and puffing, very few clubs play in excess of this at the moment. Charlton, for instance, are guaranteed to play no more than 41 games due to early exits in the two cup competitions.

But even the big guns are barely breaking the barrier. If Manchester United win the FA Cup this season, they will play 46 competitive domestic games. That's hardly smashing the very threshold which the FIFA big wig is determined to impose.

Granted, Arsenal's success in the Carling Cup means they will play up to 50 games this season - but that has enabled them to give vital first team experience to the like of Quincy Owusu-Abeyie and Francesc Fabregas Soler.

Ironically, Blatter has openly criticised the lack of opportunity for young talent to break through at bigger clubs in the Premiership.

Arsenal have come under fire for failing to give youth a chance. But, quite simply, without the League Cup there would be no opportunity for these players to see first team action.

One player who has benefited greatly is young forward David Bentley. This season he has come to the fore in the competition, subsequently earning a chance in the Premiership and scoring a cracking lob against Middlesbrough in the FA Cup. His form has led to an England Under-21 call-up - when he scored on his debut against the Netherlands.

This basic thing here is that an increased fixture schedule is the simple result of success. Would Middlesbrough prefer to play less games a season and not have had the experience of Carling Cup victory at the Millennium Stadium? Of course not, it's nonsense.

If you're a successful side, you will by effect play more games. Do you find the supporters complaining about the number of matches? No, because every fan wants success.

Blatter may pass his ideas off as being 'for the good of the game', but it's hard not to think that there is an ulterior motive. Let's be honest, both FIFA and UEFA have never been exactly overjoyed with English football and have often seen it as something of a nuisance.

Certainly, both organisations are eager for the home nations to lose their right to an individual vote on the International Football Associations Board (IFAB) and switch to a collective British vote.

Blatter this week stated he would not oppose a British football team playing in the Olympics if London's bid for the 2012 games proves successful.

But don't be surprised if he were to use it as a lever to force England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to come together as one unit on the committee.

Let's not forget that Blatter has the interests of FIFA at the forefront. And while he is not always the most popular of figures, he has powerful allies - which enabled him to comfortably see off a challenge led by Issa Hayatou of Cameroon for the presidency before the World Cup in Korea/Japan - putting himself in an impregnable position.

The Confederations Cup, a pointless tournament slipped into the summer when there isn't an international tournament of note which will finally be binned after being held in Germany next year, is one of Blatter's little brainchildren.

So, too, is the World Club Championship which has proved to be such a failure that it was scrapped after just one tournament - held in Brazil in 2000, which forced Manchester United to withdraw from the FA Cup.

But Blatter doesn't give up that easily, and the competition will return next year on an annual basis.

The 68-year-old is no stranger to change for change's sake - he proposed both the enlarging of goals and replacement of throw-ins with kick-ins in the early 90s in a bid to make the sport more attractive to the American market.

And, more recently, he pushed for the World Cup to become a biennial tournament, something which would have put a huge strain on club football.

Blatter's pet projects for international club and country football will undermine to role of domestic club football across the globe - and especially in Europe.

He is forever sticking his nose in where it's not wanted - or needed. But, as president of the world's governing body, he continues to enjoy an unsettling amount of power and influence across the globe.