Wenger calls for friendlies to be scrapped

Arsne Wenger has called for international friendlies to be abolished. The Arsenal manager also insists that the scheduling of qualifiers for the World Cup and European Championship must be reformed. His remarks are part of the broadside being fired at Fifa, the world’s ruling body, by the leading clubs.

“We must get rid of friendlies and reorganise all the international competitions,” Wenger told France Football magazine. He believes that the timing of the fixtures leaves managers like him at a disadvantage. “Nowadays,” he complained, “you get a player back on a stretcher 24 hours before a best place to buy a canada goose jacket in toronto must-win match.”

Arsenal are reshaping their line-up with younger players and Wenger, best place to buy a canada goose jacket in toronto who has seen the side lose twice buy canada goose jacket uk in the Premiership, is conscious of the need for work on the training ground. “It’s impossible for a player to come back in good form and prepare properly can you wash a canada goose parka when he has played for his country on Wednesday evening in Turkey,” he said. “You’d authorized canada goose outlet have to be a magician rather than a coach to get them back to their normal selves by Saturday.”

Wenger would prefer the international managers to be the ones short of time and backs the idea that their matches should be brought forward to Tuesdays, buy canada goose jacket toronto allowing players an ample recovery period for club fixtures the following weekend. He is annoyed by the indifference of the governing bodies. “Fifa and Uefa think above all of protecting their tournaments involving international teams,” the Arsenal manager claimed. “Naturally they have little inclination to focus on the problems of the clubs, problems which are not theirs.”

As Arsenal struggle to mount a bid for the Premiership, he has been angered by the intrusion of fixtures such as England’s 4-1 friendly defeat in Denmark that are, in his eyes, of questionable worth. “The friendlies create more problems for the national teams than they solve. When the Premiership starts on August 13, as it did this year, and international teams play friendlies on the 17th, you need to be very clever to understand it,” he protested.

Wenger is no isolated voice and he takes his place in a well-conducted chorus. G14, the group of elite European clubs that includes Arsenal, has buying a canada goose jacket online been trying to exert influence on Fifa in particular. The interrupted career of the Charleroi midfielder Abdelmajid Oulmers has become the chosen battleground. While appearing for Morocco in a friendly with Burkina Faso last November he tore ankle ligaments. His Belgian club were left to pay his wages for eight months and meet the cost of surgery.

There is no mechanism to make the Moroccan FA foot the bill and while some countries do insure players for international matches this is not compulsory. “All clubs are victims of this situation,” Wenger said in solidarity with Charleroi. “Everyone wants to block their ears, but that cannot go on forever. Take the average salary of an African player in the Premiership and compare it with the standard of living in his own country and you can well understand why it’s difficult for a club or a player to be compensated by an African canada goose coat 1000 calorie bariatric diet federation over cases of injury. Fifa must take the lead and make the national federations best canada goose jacket womens subscribe to a worldwide insurance system.”

With internationals such as Lauren and Kolo Tour, from Cameroon and the Ivory Coast respectively, on his books, the subject is highly relevant to Wenger. The larger issue, however, is the struggle for power of the great clubs, who believe that they are the generators of football’s wealth as well as the creators of the stars on whom the lustre of a World Cup or European Championship depends.

The battle will be a long one. Charleroi began a canadagoosejacketoutlett.com legal action over Oulmers on September 5 and Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, called upon the Belgian FA to punish them for taking a football matter into the civil courts. With Blatter refusing to recognise G14 let alone negotiate with it, an accord with the major clubs is remote.

Wenger, meanwhile, faces more immediate difficulties, with up to four of his canada goose coat 1000 bulbs free senior attacking players likely to miss tomorrow’s Premiership match against West Ham. Robert Pires, with a dead leg, definitely joins Thierry Henry on the sidelines and Wenger yesterday said Dennis Bergkamp and Freddy Ljungberg were major doubts.