FOOTBALL: Fifa favours break to ease fatigue factor

THE MOVERS and shakers of world football called yesterday for a four-week winter break for professional players worldwide and urged the sport's governing body to introduce a harmonised calendar by 2004, at the latest, to stop the game running out of control.

At its first meeting since being set-up by their president, Sepp Blatter, eight months ago, Fifa's 20-member Football Committee, a high-profile think tank with no decision-making power but significant influence on how the sport will progress into the 21st century, spent four hours debating important issues facing the game today.

An array of football's famous, including Pele, Michel Platini, Johan Cruyff and Bobby Charlton, agreed that the most pressing problem was the need for a unified calendar to halt the increasing strain put on the careers of young players and stop them burning out before they reach their peak.

All agreed it was essential to have a four-week period of recuperation, similar to the winter break taken by a number of European leagues - but in England and Scotland there is no general break in competitions. They suggested the break should be applied on every continent in December and January.

"Players simply do not have enough time to rest these days," Platini said. "The problems in world football are so numerous that we didn't have time to discuss everything but the calendar and rest periods are the issues that keep coming back and need to be addressed seriously."

Charlton was another to endorse the need to give players a decent period of time away from the game. "Some countries have six inches of frost while others have sunshine at the same time of the year but we have to start somewhere," Charlton said. "Once you can unify the number of games the people play, you can start looking after them."

There was also considerable debate over Blatter's controversial proposal to stage the World Cup every two years. But here opinions among football's best loved personalities of past and present was mixed.

"I personally think it would devalue the tournament," Charlton said. "But a lot of countries think that it is a good thing. Every two years would certainly encompass a lot of countries but I think the game generally would suffer."

Gordon Taylor, the chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association, agreed with Charlton. "Anything that reduces the specialness of the World Cup would need to be looked at very closely," he said.

However, Platini did not agree. "I think the World Cup every two years has some merit because people like to see the best players as often as possible. But it couldn't happen before 2009 because, after the 2006 World Cup, there is a European Championship, then the Olympic Games."

So many issues were on the agenda that items such as players' agents and the club versus country debate were hardly touched upon. "We skated through a lot of things," Charlton said. "But it was a good start."

Cruyff was among those who called for a reduction in the number of friendly internationals, and Charlton had some sympathy with his view.

"There are important international matches and there are unimportant international matches," Charlton said. "Brazil, for instance, play 25 matches a year as part of their Nike contract. If every country came up with something like that there would be terrible problems."

Although the Football Committee cannot force any of the issues discussed yesterday to be applied, their opinions will clearly be considered seriously by Blatter. Pele, for instance, flew in from South America to attend the meeting, at which Franz Beckenbauer was also present. Beckenbauer said: "We are only an advisory group but Fifa will be well advised to listen to our views because everyone who was here today has a great reputation and great knowledge and experience."

The panel, which also includes referees, coaches and administrators as well as players is expected to meet four or five times a year, with its next meeting probably in July.