Given his injuries, Christian Pulisic’s current workload is enough these days. (Photo courtesy of Chelsea)

By Michael Lewis

FrontRowSoccer.com Editor

There is a mantra I have followed through the decades:

It’s all about the players.

Repeat: It’s all about the players.

You might have seen a story about a FIFA survey saying that that a majority of 30,390 fans who said that that soccer was their favorite sport that they would want to see more frequent men’s and women’s World Cups, as long as the players’ workload doesn’t increase.

Broken down, that would be 63.7 percent wanted the men’s competition more frequently and 52.5 percent of them wanted to see Women’s World Cups on a more frequent basis.

FIFA has been looking into having World Cups every two years (biennial). At the present time, they are quadrennial with the men’s pointing to Qatar in 2022 and the women looking toward New Zealand/Australia in 2023.

I really, really, really hope FIFA doesn’t change what it has.

More World Cups mean more revenue for an organization that has more money than it needs.

I just don’t see how anyone can slash the players’ workload these days with all these league, cup (continental and international) commitments they have.

Please tell me how they’re going to cut down the work load.

Players are not machines. They aren’t like the avatars you might see performing in FIFA 22, where you can throw them onto your screen, and they play and play and play.

In real life, they get injured.

Cases in point for the U.S. men’s national team: Christian Pulisic and Giovanni Reyna. Look how long it  was and still is for them to recover from injuries suffered in the September World Cup qualifying window. Heck, Reyna still hasn’t played for Borussia Dortmund since then.

The players’ competitive plate is more than full. It’s falling off the sides.

You know what makes the World Cup – men and women – so special? Because they are quadrennial competitions. Besides, are there enough countries that can handle the load of a 48-team World Cup? Or will FIFA need two, three or even four countries to host future men’s competitions?

Like I said before, it’s all about the players.

Don’t kill the golden goose for pure greed.

Greed is not good. It is not good for the game, and it is not good for the players.

You can see the press release and how the survey was broken down here:

SURVEY SAYS: FIFA states fans want more frequent men’s and women’s World Cups

Front Row Soccer editor Michael Lewis has covered 13 World Cups (eight men, five women), seven Olympics and 25 MLS Cups. He has written about New York City FC, New York Cosmos, the New York Red Bulls and both U.S. national teams for Newsday and has penned a soccer history column for the Guardian.com. Lewis, who has been honored by the Press Club of Long Island and National Soccer Coaches Association of America, is the former editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He has written seven books about the beautiful game and has published ALIVE AND KICKING The incredible but true story of the Rochester Lancers. It is available at Amazon.com.