Blatter against 36-team W/Cup

FRANKFURT: FIFA chief Sepp Blatter, in an interview published yesterday, said he was against raising the number of World Cup finalists to 36 and at the same time told German organisers of the 2006 tournament to improve communications with the world governing body of soccer.

“I am against 36 World Cup teams,” Blatter said in an interview with the Kicker magazine. FIFA’s executive committee last week came out in favour of allowing four extra teams into the 2006 finals, although two important commissions of the world body had opposed the expansion on technical grounds. The final decision will be made by the executive committee in June. “We will look very deeply into this theme. Until now, there was talk about more places but not about the consequences for television, marketing, duration of the tournament, transparency of the schedule. All contracts were made for a World Cup with 32 teams. Because of that, the executive committee made a mistake with this proposal,” Blatter said. He said a World Cup with 36 teams could not be a model for the future. The South American confederation made the proposal after a reorganisation of the current 32 places effectively reduced its number of berths from five to four.

“Thirty-two is the best number to get a finalist, first you have three matches in a group and then direct elimination,” Blatter said. Franz Beckenbauer, president of the organising committee, also has spoken against raising the number of finalists, although German organisers say they could accommodate 36 teams without major problems. Beckenbauer said one of the problems could be match-fixing because some third-place teams also would qualify for the second round. “I can understand Beckenbauer’s anger over this point,” Blatter said. But the FIFA chief also criticised German organisers for what he said was a lack of proper communication. “Germany has two offices (in Munich and Frankfurt), and we have the same kind of communication problems we had at the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea,” Blatter said. “FIFA and the organising committee have to solve this problem. We would like to have one partner to talk to,” he said.