Will a Bigger European Championship Be Better?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/sports/soccer/12iht-soccer12.html

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LONDON — Had Christopher Columbus been a soccer man, he might never have discovered America. For soccer, a global sport for well over a hundred years now, still trembles whenever somebody proposes a radical journey.

At the start of this century, there were many who said a World Cup in Africa was impossible. FIFA pulled it off in South Africa in 2010, although the host still has to count the cost of the white-elephant stadiums left in its wake.

Now, with the tournament charted to reach Brazil in 2014, Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, the doubters fear that somewhere along the line, FIFA might run aground.

And Europe, where it all began, is thinking expansively as well.

Michel Platini heads the 54-nation European block known as UEFA, and, Platini being Platini, he believes in radicalism. As a player, he saw the field as a canvas on which he could create what few men dared. He moved between midfield and attack wherever the urge took him, and he moved so freely, so daringly, through the 1980s that very few opponents could fathom what he did, much less restrain his creativity.

Now, in a suit, he is obliged to move among politicians struggling to make the Euro zone viable. He pushes the boundaries, taking his sport where others fear to tread.

The doubters were lined up against Platini’s push for the 2012 European championship to straddle two hosts — Poland and Ukraine.

They are even more opposed to his expanding the finals tournament from 16 to 24 national teams in 2016, when it will be held in his home country of France.

Extra slots please, of course, the members who vote for him, because more of them get to share in the profits and the privilege of being part of a prestigious tournament. But expansion displeases traditionalists and frightens those who think that the larger you make the event, the more you degrade the quality.

An expanded Euro becomes more like a World Cup, in which the group phase matches are largely seen as a weeding out of the weak.

But onwards and upwards, Platini steers the UEFA boat. His latest proposal is to spread the 2020 Euro across the continent. It is, as yet, simply an idea. UEFA will form committees to test the waters and see how it can work to stage one tournament simultaneously around maybe six countries.

“There is a blank piece of paper,” Platini says. “I love zany ideas. The challenge is extraordinary, no?” Extraordinary, yes, monsieur.

Outside UEFA’s house in Nyon, Switzerland, the naysayers fire torpedoes at his scheme. Soccer insiders and administrators with vested interests of their own can see the vision.

“At this time of a united Europe, it is a good decision,” said Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the German who chairs the European Club Association that often fights against the powers in FIFA and UEFA that rule the game.

“At a time of Euro zone crises,” Rummenigge added, “one or two countries should not be forced to invest in infrastructure projects, but instead use existing structures.” Germany could easily stage games. England, Portugal, Poland, Ukraine and (soon) France have spent the money and would gladly open the stadiums and the highways to more matches.

Azerbaijan and Turkey just want a piece of the action, a use for facilities already planned. But Russia, in spite of the building now under way before its World Cup, sounded a warning. “Very difficult to implement,” suggested Nikita Simonyan, vice president of the Russian Football Union.

Difficulty lies in the crossing of borders, the distances and the time zones involved in a spread-out tournament.

Many of those hurdles lie ahead for Russia in 2018, and some of them were crossed in the United States as far back as 1994, when soccer’s grand circus carried us joyfully across America’s vast distances and its four time zones for the World Cup.

As someone who was skeptical about the United States wanting that tournament for the right reasons, I was carried away with the enthusiasm from every state and every community involved, who made the difficulties evaporate along the journey.

Even this year, in Poland and Ukraine, the costs of mounting a smaller European event on new territory appeared daunting. The tournament happened in the end, but it remains for the two hosts to capitalize on the infrastructure that cost them so much, especially in the current economic climate.

Euro 2012 was Platini’s first gamble as UEFA president. He sees now, as he scans broader horizons, that there was a flaw in the tournament this summer. “2020 won’t be like Poland and Ukraine, with 50 French supporters here and 70 Spanish there,” he said. “I congratulate the British supporters who went there, but perhaps they now have the possibility to go to another country that is closer.”

And he used rhetoric he has picked up along the way. “Before,” he said, “the fans had to go to the Euro. Now the Euro is coming toward the fans.” Taking the matches to the fans, and saving their legs and their wallets, is a kind thought. It comes a little late after the expanse and the expense of exploring new territories, including Africa and Brazil, and in the coming years, Russia and Qatar.

The truth is that presidents in a sport please their electorates. FIFA’s Sepp Blatter has courted the African vote, and by the time he gives up his office, the global governing body for soccer will have explored the riches that Russia and the Gulf have laid before the committee.

Platini is at the heart of Europe, but he is reaching far. “The FIFA president said it is a marvelous idea to spread the field,” Platini said last week. “He told me somebody wanted to do this a few years ago with the African Cup of Nations. It was Qaddafi,” he said, referring to the former Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.