International glory game losing its lustre

Andrew Fifield reflects on a changing soccer world where international football is increasingly playing second fiddle to the…

Andrew Fifield reflects on a changing soccer world where international football is increasingly playing second fiddle to the lucrative club game.

England qualified for the World Cup on Saturday night. It is a point worth mentioning, because it seems to have gone largely unnoticed here in England. The nationalistic jamboree which usually accompanies sporting achievement has been conspicuous by its absence. The bunting has stayed in the loft. The flags, if they were flying at all, would probably be at half-mast. A nation has fallen out of love with its team.

Not that Englishmen are ungrateful for their side's (relative) success. Better to have qualified with a whimper than exited with a roar. And few would trade places with Irish supporters, who are priming themselves for a night of nail-chewing on Wednesday when Switzerland visit Lansdowne Road.

But the fact remains that, for many, international soccer has lost its lustre. It is a worrying trend, exacerbated by the fact that the standard of major tournaments seems to slip with each passing year. South Korea - previously non-achievers on soccer's world stage - sounded the first warning note when they reached the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup.

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Then, two years later, a hard-working but modestly-talented Greece somehow picked up the European Championships. Now, the organisers of Germany 2006 are beginning to sweat at the prospect of the tournament taking place without some of the biggest names in the game.

Sweden, Spain, Russia and the 1998 World Cup winners France - the only European team to have won the World Cup in the last 15 years - could all miss out. The Czech Republic, who dazzled the watching world with their sparkling football at Euro 2004, need to avoid defeat in Finland on Wednesday simply to book themselves a play-off berth.

In Africa, the situation is even more extreme. Traditional strong nations such as Cameroon, Senegal and Nigeria are all spending next summer thumb-twiddling. Instead, the world will get their first glimpse of the Ivory Coast, Angola and Togo.

Everyone loves an underdog, of course, but the romance is dulled by the realisation that the triumphs of David are being made possible only by the indifference of Goliath.

In Europe, at least, it is club soccer that counts. The Champions League has now become so bloated with cash that the standing of international tournaments, where teams compete for glory rather than material gain, has diminished. Players whose reputations and wealth have been accrued through their achievements at club level can no longer be motivated by patriotism alone.

What price immortality, one might ask, but football is a hard-nosed business. Club managers used to consider it an honour when their players were drafted into national squads. Now they view it as a damned nuisance. The issue was brought into sharp focus again last week when Everton's David Moyes began bleating about Australia's insistence that Tim Cahill should report for a training camp in the Netherlands ahead of the Socceroos' friendly game against Jamaica. Moyes argued that Cahill was tired and needed a break - in October? - although his Australian counterpart Guus Hiddink was nearer the mark when he suggested that, "with Everton bottom of the English Premier League, they are obviously looking for reasons to keep him at home."

Moyes is not the only Premiership manager to consider international matches a tiresome inconvenience. Alex Ferguson's Manchester United players have a notorious habit of sustaining niggling injuries on the eve of friendly games, only to effect a miraculous recovery before the next top-flight fixture. Arsenal's manager Arsène Wenger even suggested earlier this season that non-competitive internationals should be consigned to the dustbin of history - a theory which might find support amongst some of his international counterparts, Sven-Goran Eriksson included.

The clubs' chagrin is, to an extent, understandable. After all, it is they, not the national football associations, that have to dig deep to fund their players' multi-million pound contracts. Furthermore, it is the clubs - and their increasingly under-pressure managers - who suffer most when players are injured while away with their countries.

The Belgian First Division club Charleroi are currently seeking compensation from the Moroccan football federation after their midfielder Abdelmajid Oulmers was seriously injured playing in a friendly against Burkina Faso. Charleroi's concern was reserved not so much for their crocked star player, but for their damaged coffers. "We finished fifth in the league, but we could have even finished second, which would have meant Champions League qualification," said the Charleroi manager Abbas Bayat. "It is a patently unfair system." Unfair and unprofitable.

Football's leading personalities are beginning to resemble those rapacious cartoon characters whose eyes turn into cash registers whenever they spy an opportunity to make a quick buck. In this climate, it is sad, but hardly surprising, that the standing of international football - which, for all its foibles, still relies on its participants being motivated by pride rather than pounds - has slipped. It is a romantic relic of an age which has long since passed.