FIFA Insists On Goal Of Biennial World Cup Project, UEFA Not Interested In Compromise

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin (TWitter @eufacom)

JAKARTA - UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin insists his side is not interested in compromising with FIFA on the biennial World Cup discourse ahead of the world soccer governing body's summit on Monday next week.

FIFA still seems to insist on continuing to talk about the discourse in a global conference, but Ceferin thinks the event is not a decisive moment and UEFA has not prepared a specific strategy.

"As far as we know, FIFA is still trying to get the project going, then there are also signals from other parties that they will not insist on pursuing it until the end," Ceferin said as quoted by Antara, Friday.

"We don't have a specific strategy. For Monday tomorrow, there will be 211 federations, which means about 500 people are involved in video conferencing. I don't expect things to be too complicated.

"But we will be watching developments and responding to developments. For now, we don't even know the agenda of the event. The only thing we know is 'Football's Future', something that could mean a lot or nothing at all," he added.

CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani, who is known to be a key partner of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, earlier this month said he was inclined to seek compromise solutions.

Montagliani had put forward the idea of expanding the Confederations Cup competition or the global version of the Nations League as an alternative to the biennial World Cup discourse.

However, Ceferin admitted that he had not seen any detailed concrete proposals regarding the idea.

"I'm quite tired of hearing or reading the proposal from the media," Ceferin said.

"Maybe naive, but I hope we can start discussing with the necessary documents, concrete proposals, serious ideas, instead of waiting until the morning to find out in the paper what our partner's proposal will look like," he continued.

Ceferin urged FIFA and the continental confederations to shift focus on the picture of the international match calendar that needs to be agreed upon beyond the 2024 period.

"The problem is that everything is connected. We have received various proposals for various competitions, and that has delayed the discussion of international match schedules for protracted," said Ceferin.

"We haven't had time to talk about the calendar because of the many ideas that have sprung up. I hope the discussion can start soon after the turn of the year," he concluded.