How do you know that it is a mess FIDE has created ? Maybe the players themselves want to play 12 games as opposed to 24 games.

Maybe that's so. I'm sure the players would like to do as little work as possible for the same paycheck.

But so what? Since when has Kirsan ever cared for what the players or anybody else wants? For the last 13 years, FIDE has been about what he wants. So he can just take the heat for anything bad. If he wanted more than 12 games, there would be more than 12 games.

IMO, FIDE is the ultimate responsible because if they had a firm hand, players would abide to their rules.

It is ultimately FIDE who decided to have 24 games, then 6, 12, 14, 20, tournaments, matches, etc. Players just want clear rules: an event to XX games, on YY date. The calendar should be fixed well beforehand. But we've had countless different structures on the go, changing ongoing regulations, etc.

To me that is clearly a mess.

The biggest change was in 1998 when FIDE moved from 20-game match to a KO tournament (late 1997) followed by a 6-match between the defending champ and the challenger (Karpov vs Anand).