Sri Lanka players pose for picture during an FIFA WORLD CUP QATAR 2022 Qualification Round 2 at … [+]
This March international break, 20 national soccer teams will take part in the first ever FIFA Series.
From Vanuatu in Oceania to Andorra in Europe, all of FIFA’s confederations are represented.
The series aims to give more opportunities for FIFA’s lower-ranked teams, with Algeria the only participating national team ranked in the top 50, and the average FIFA ranking of the twenty teams being 131.
For some of those teams, it is a rare chance to play matches against teams from different confederations. In some cases, it might be the first time a team has faced an opponent from certain confederations. When Bhutan, for instance, play the Central African Republic in Sri Lanka on March 22, it will the first time the team has ever played an opponent from Africa.
It’s only the second time that Bhutan have played a team from outside of Asia, with the other occurrence being their match in 2002 against Montserrat, which was the subject of the documentary “The Other Final.”
The FIFA Series is being played at four centralized locations: Sri Lanka, Algeria, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia.
FIFA’s Regional Member Associations Director for Europe, Elkhan Mammadov, who was closely involved in organizing the 2024 FIFA Series, says that while it is easy for high-ranked teams to find opponents to play friendly matches against, for others it is not so easy.
At the time of “The Other Final”, Bhutan and Montserrat were the lowest teams in the FIFA rankings. Bhutan have moved up to 184th in the latest rankings, with Sri Lanka the lowest ranked in this FIFA Series. Only six teams in the world are below 204th ranked Sri Lanka, whose only official games in 2023 were the World Cup qualifiers against Yemen.
That lack of games recently shows why teams like Sri Lanka need the FIFA Series, although it is also something that could have been remedied by a better structured World Cup qualification that currently sees some teams in Asia eliminated after just two games. The five Asian teams in the FIFA Series: Mongolia, Brunei Darussalam, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Bhutan, have all already been eliminated from qualification for the 2026 World Cup.
As well as the matches themselves, Mammadov highlighted the benefit for teams of playing these matches at the centralized locations, saying they stay almost a week in one country, which is “important for the preparational purpose as well and for the team spirit as well, and for the coaches as well.” He said the hosts were chosen because “we want the FIFA Series to be played in a good infrastructure,” and want to provide the teams with a high standard of training pitches.
Saudi Arabia, while not playing in the FIFA Series, is hosting several matches. Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam and Vanuatu are among the teams making the long journey, in Vanuatu’s case almost 14,000 kilometers, to Saudi Arabia.
FIFA is helping out with the travel costs by giving each team a minimum lump sum, and Mammadov also says that as FIFA is not taking over the sponsorship of the matches, he thinks the tournament is “a great opportunity for the teams to attract more partners and sponsors.”
He said that member associations have been enthusiastic about the series, and that had FIFA started organizing it earlier, the number of participants could have been double what it is. But FIFA isn’t pushing teams to take part. In fact, Curaçao, who were supposed to take part in the series, are instead playing two games in Turkey against Moldova and English Championship side Hull City, with Bermuda playing in the FIFA Series instead.
This 2024 FIFA Series is just a pilot series though, with FIFA having much bigger plans for the March 2026 international break.
Mammadov says FIFA already has a list of countries that have reached out about 2026, and that it could feature twice as many teams as this year.
