Man I wish I was I was a billionaire. I would stage a Major International soccer tournament in 2022. Try to see how many of the big teams I could steal away, from that pile of corruption, All it would take is two or three of the big European teams and I bet it would fall like dominoes into a new soccer federation.
If you could get Brazil and Argentina as well. Or maybe only one of them, and a few of the lesser lights. But, yeah, it could be doable, with enough money for bribes.
This brings up an interesting question. I’m Israeli. Will they let me into Qatar during the world cup?
Man, I can totally see Israeli making the Cup for the second time ever in 2022, and the team getting jumped by a riot as soon as they step off the plane.
Not realistic? Based on what? Your argument seems to be that the US hasn’t waited long enough because every other country had to wait a long time before hosting again. But it seems fairly “realistic” to think that the US might host again in just 28 years because
A) the 1994 World Cup - even though it had 12 fewer games played than all the Cups since then - still has the highest total attendance of all time.
B) unlike every single other nation on the planet, the US doesn’t need to build anything to host. As the USSF likes to point out, we hosted in 1994. We could have hosted again in 2002, using only brand new stadiums built after 1994 - and in 2010, we could have done it again, using only brand new stadiums built since 2002.
There is simply no doubting that the next World Cup to be held in the US will destroy all previous records for attendance and profit. And if that’s not reason enough for you, then may I point out FIFA’s own supposed rules about continental rotation? They started that rule just in time to get South Africa and Brazil in the mix; then just when it should have been North America’s turn again, they changed their minds.
In short - the only unrealistic host option for 2022 was the one they actually went with.
I was just thinking about the Israel-qualifies scenario. Qatar has no relations with Israel, but I think they would have no choice but to let them in for the cup. If Israel does not qualify I’m not sure if any Israeli spectators would be let in. But this is as things stand today. 2022 is a long way off and the political situation could change dramatically by then.
Another thing is that I doubt that Qatar will need to worry about how to handle 3 million fans. Even in a soccer crazy world I think a lot of people will stay home for this one. Even if people were brave enough to venture into the Islamic blast furnace they could be priced out of it. As one of my friends put it to me, “Doha is a nice town. Just be sure to take out that second mortgage before you go out to dinner.” I suspect they will not draw one half of the 5 million that were predicted to have attended the cup had it been held in the US.
One more thought. The air conditioning in these huge, disposable buildings in the searing heat will have a staggering carbon footprint. This will not be known as the “green” World Cup.
Based on the fact FIFA tend to like to maintain a cyclical system of awarding the hosting rights (*payola pending, of course!) - Italia '90, USA '94, France '98, Japan/Korea '02, Germany '06, S.Africa '10, Brazil '14, Russia '18, Qatar '22, likely a Eurpoean country, likely China.
From all reports, the breakdown more than likely went:
- Portugal/Spain: FIFA don’t favor dual bids; economic situations there; Spain just won the cup.
- England: BBC exposé on FIFA corruption; internal pressure for England to abandon bid outright in protest to nefarious FIFA dealings; shitty food!
- Neatherlands/Belgium: Dual bid; England more attractive.
- Russia: Aging infrastructure; lack of tourist accomidation; “Mafia state”; distance between stadia; ‘unfriendly’ tourist destination; apathy; vodka…!
Summtion: This was England’s until the BBC exposé on FIFA’s shady dealings. Enter: Cash’d up, post Soviet oligharchs like Abramovich.
- Japan: too soon after '02; time zone; distance.
- Korea: too soon after '02; time zone; the Damocles of the ‘Ill dynasty’; they eat dogs! :dubious:
- Australia: lowest projected revenue for FIFA due to TV rights and time zone; face-palm video presentation :smack:; as with Italy in '06. Germany/Ghana '10, FIFA didn’t want them rising above their station too soon.
- USA: somewhat soon after '94.
- Qatar: no infrastructure only promises; oppressive climate; oppressive(?) culture; diminutive population; security(?); rubbishy, currently 116th ranked, potentially embarrassing host team; worst FIFA technical assessment et al.
Summation: Qatar’s pockets were deeper than the US’, and indeed AU’s, as far as corruptable FIFA officals were concerned. AU was eliminated early as they might have been a risk due to preferencial votes if it came down to Qatar and themselves - they also lost their only guaranteed vote from Oceania due to an inopportune [token] corruption related suspension. The US had the most legitimate bid financially and ready infrastructure-wise… despite sugar daddy Freeman fluffing his lines!
FIFA’s queerer than a three-dollar bill. Everything is in order here. :rolleyes:
The real concern I have re Qatar’s appointment is in regards the post goal/victory celebrations in the world game. A UK couple were jailed for kissing in public in Dubai, UAE this earlier this year. Now, I’m unsure of the specifics of Qatari legislation (and too lazy to research it now) - does the place run under a Sharia system? But if a legitimate heterosexual couple can be punsihed with imprisonment for locking lips in Dubai (putatively a considerably more forward Arabic region than Qatar), then I shudder to think what would result from some of those more ‘raunchy’ goal celebrations football players are [in]famous for! :eek:
lol!
From what I have heard the US had some work to do on some of the stadia it planned to use. Some of them needed to be ‘widened’ in order to accommodate a decent size pitch and sidelines and dugouts etc. Actually moving stands back a few metres sounds ludicrously difficult so I guess some other plans were in place but the stadia weren’t completely ready to go.
That aside the US would still be a good place to host it in terms of stadium size though the NFL stadiums tend to be more ‘open’ and gently banked than a football stadium and some atmosphere is lost.
Pretty much any big European country could host the World Cup based on its existing infrastructure. That is hardly a big advantage for the US. And I don’t see how anyone could forecast what the record for attendance and profit will be in a decade or two since the global football market is changing all the time. For all we know China may set records in both and earn more than the US would have. In any case profit isn’t the sole motive for awarding the Cup. Spreading the game to new regions is a very important goal and Quatar scores heavily over the US in that respect. Like I said I would have preferred Turkey to have been the first ME country to host the cup and while I think the air-conditioned stadiums will work fine I do share some of the misgivings aired in this thread about Quatar’s capacity to host international fans. Still I would put my money on the Quataris making this a successful tournament. Despite some glitches I believe the Doha Asian games were widely viewed as a success and in some respects that was a much bigger event than the World Cup with more than 10000 athletes participating in dozens of events.
There weren’t any European countries contending for the 2022 Cup.
I know. I was just responding to the statement that “unlike every single other nation on the planet, the US doesn’t need to build anything to host.”
I would put it this way. World cup hosts tend to fall into two categories:
a) Countries which are hosting for the first time, preferably representing a region which is hosting for the first time. Like South Africa, Japan/Korea and the US itself in 94.
b) Traditional football powers: Brazil, Germany, France etc.
The US falls in neither category so it’s not particularly shocking they lost the bid.
Are these air-conditioned stadiums going to be covered? That usually means an artificial playing surface, which would hold up to practice and games, but I’d be surprised if FIFA rules allow it.
On the other hand, how the hell could you air condition an outdoor stadium?
The third possibility is to build domed stadiums with retractable, natural-grass playing fields. There’s one in Sapporo (used during the 2002 World Cup) and one in Phoenix. You could have multiple fields for each stadium; slide one of them in for the teams to train on, then slide it out and slide in new, perfect turf for the game. Problem solved.
(I can’t believe I actually just typed that. Is there any limit to how extravagant this event can be?)
Why are soccer fans complaining about the heat in Qatar? Shouldn’t there be at least one thing hard about playing soccer?
No country has the stadiums and related infrastructure that the US has. Germany is close, perhaps, but only because of what they just built for 2006. Even in England, only Wembley matches the size and modern quality of US stadiums. NOTE - That is NOT a slam on places like Old Trafford or Anfield. But every other stadium that England would have used in 2018 is either much older or smaller than the US stadiums, or simply hasn’t been built yet. And the other big European countries you mention may have (for example) a Nou Camp and Bernabeu, but their 3rd place team (Villarreal in this case) plays in a 25,000 seater. Only 4 teams in Ligue 1 have 40,000+ seaters. Serie A has 8, but most of them are ancient.
Those records that the US set in 1994 were in a country that had no legitimate national soccer league. MLS may never be the Premier League, but it has undeniably raised the awareness of soccer in the US to a level leaps and bounds beyond where it was here 16 years ago. For that matter, just look at the attendance for the 1999 Women’s World Cup. When the US puts on a big show, it breaks records.
And with Qatar hosting in 2022, China should be ineligible for 2026 (unless, of course, FIFA goes back on it’s word…again… which would shock absolutely no one).
Turkey certainly would have been a much better choice. If the US had lost to Turkey I would be bummed, but in no way upset. But Qatar is simply a ridiculous choice. How can anyone be expected to believe that this was done entirely above the table? FIFA just oozes corruption these days.
:rolleyes: seems a fair assumption that you know nothing about the game so let me inform you. Football at room temperature is exhausting, at 40+ it is dangerous in the extreme if played properly.
Now of course you could design new, open stadia with air conditioning (FIFA won’t allow closed stadia or artificial pitches) But why not actually play the game in countries where that is not needed?
Qatar is simply a ridiculous choice. This is nothing to do with taking the game to a new audience and all about deep pockets.
Not to mention that Qatar has some particularly discriminatory laws and huge costs.
Do you have a source for this.Mittu above seems to suggest the US needed to do a fair bit of work to gets stadiums up to scratch. In any event it’s a moot point. If existing infrastructure was the main criterion the same half-dozen places would get the World Cup most of the time. Clearly FIFA places a huge premium on putting the World Cup in new places with the idea that it will boost the football infrastructure there thereby boosting the global game. So a country which has the infrastructure in place doesn’t necessarily get the nod over a country which has a credible plan to build the infrastructure.
The fact is that FIFA has been fantastically successful in spreading the game around the world and pretty much every recent World Cup in a new place has been a success. There were plenty of people criticising FIFA for awarding the cup to South Africa. In fact IIRC there was criticism when the US got the 1994 cup ahead of countries like Brazil. In both cases the doubters were proved wrong and my bet is they will be again in 2022.
An interesting articleabout some of the problems with the US bid. Somewhat ironically one of the concerns was the heat:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Quatari air-conditioned stadiums turn out to be better for players and spectators than US stadiums especially in hot cities in the South and West.
There are also some concerns about visa/security issues. US citizens don’t realize this but getting there can be an extremely painful process for a lot of foreigners. I suspect that has played a role in US losses in both their Olympic and World Cup bids.
There is no question that this is true, the air-conditioned (actually I think climate-controlled is more accurate) stadiums purpose built for the event will be far better in terms of temperature and layout than a re-purposed NFL stadium, it’s a question of justifying the expense and if you are rich as rich can be (like Qatar) you can build stuff like this without a second thought. The heat in USA 94 was a big deal and was poorly managed with players wilting but not being allowed to take on water. The heat won’t be such a big deal in Qatar, at least not during matches, i’m not sure what the training facilities are like.
The US may have big stadiums but they aren’t football stadiums, they tend to have shallow sloped stands going back a long way from the pitch which makes it easy to have a large capacity. Football fans don’t like this, preferring to be close to the action so football stadiums tend to be steeper.
I’m also quite shocked with this result, but at least it now is clear that FIFA are only interested in how much money they can make. With this secision we will now have had 4 ‘risky’ world cups in a row (South Africa was largly ok, but the empty seats were a disgrace) with Brazil having security problems and lagging behind on infrastructure, Russia is corrupt and the Champions League final (Moscow) from a few years ago showed how bad they are in dealing with large groups of football fans and Qatar will have to build everything from scratch.
I can - while dissapointed we or England didn’t get it - sort of see the appeal of Russia, eventhough I would have expected FIFA to want a safe bid for a change, but Qatar is really rediculous. It is all fine that they are going to air condition the stadiums (now this is going to be a real green world cup), but what about training facilities? All teams need to train during the tournament, will they aircondition these fields as well (is that even possible?)? Then we have (hopefully) loads of visitors that are going to get sunburnt/faint/get heartattcks in 40+ degrees centigrade. The only thing I can’t wait for is to see how the Royal Family - or the Qatari people in general - will deal with the Brazilian (and probably many others) girls in bikinis.
I thought Australia would be a shoe in, given the experiences of Sydney 2000 and the way football is growing there.
It’s Qatar, they do extravagant spending like a fish does swimming.
I heard that part of the Qatari sales pitch was that it would in fact be a green World Cup because they would use solar power for the air conditioning. Whether this is actually viable or complete bullshit, I don’t know, but they’re obviously not short of sunshine.
That said, I still think Qatar is a ludicrous choice. I rolled my eyes a bit at first when people started saying that it’ll never actually happen, FIFA’s executive committee has just written its suicide note, that a rival tournament/federation will arise from this, etc. But now I’m wondering if they could be right. I can’t help wondering if there will be rumblings within FIFA at the middle-management level below the politburo. An ambitious younger suit might think of executing a putsch/clean-up operation. There has already been gossip that some inside FIFA are aghast at the 2022 decision. Twelve years is a long time (has a major event like this ever been awarded that far in advance?) - I’m thinking that a lot could change in that time, and maybe the World Cup won’t be in Qatar after all.