For a majority of football fans, the international break is a frustrating period in the football calendar where all major club fixtures come to a halt and all that’s on show are useless World Cup qualifiers between North Macedonia and Albania. But there’s an interesting concept developed by journalist, Paul Brown that might spice up the international break and bring meaning to otherwise pointless and or boring fixtures.
This concept is the Unofficial Football World Championships (UFWC).
Imagine if international football took a boxing like approach, whereby the World Champion would be determined by a one off game between the holder and the contender with the winner taking all until another contender deposes them.
This idea inspired the creation of the UFWC, an unofficial competition tracing back from the very first international fixture in 1872 that determines the World Champions through a boxing style metric. From the very 1st game in 1872, whoever was the winner became World Champions until they were beaten and in that case, the team that beat them takes their crown and so on and so forth.
Italy are current Champions and tonight they go up against Lithuania in what seems to be a boring World Cup qualifier but is actually the latest edition of the UFWC. If Italy win or draw then they keep their title for now. But if Lithuania pull out a shocking victory then they become Champions of the World despite having never come within a sniff of a World Cup.
This competition turns any game, no matter how useless, into a paper view showdown.
And even though the players themselves most likely have no idea about this competition, it does make boring international fixtures much more interesting and worth the watch.
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