Major sporting events need patience and time. Shortening the cycle would confirm that the game really is all about money
![A World Cup every two years would finally kill football’s golden goose | Philipp Lahm](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e641241d1c136732ac625348f85e4cbe3180850c/0_159_2511_1507/master/2511.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=e952b76e69b6eeb734e2921cb6037d80)
There has never been so much football. Every day, someone somewhere plays someone else, and you can follow it all over the world on any device – live, on demand, or just the highlights, on
YouTube, DAZN or
Twitter. There’s more to come; soon the
Champions League will host a hundred more games a year. Our collective attention, as research calls it, is declining in the process, but it’s hard to stop the trend.
What Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, and his adviser Arsène Wenger now have in mind could finally lead to overconsumption. They want to hold the
World Cup every two years instead of four. The European Championship as well as other continental competitions would presumably follow this rhythm at some point, so that in the future a major
Football tournament would be held annually.