The "New Meadowlands Stadium" is MetLife Stadium. The five boroughs don't have big stadiums. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision has 128 teams and none of them are in the five boroughs. The NCAA Football Championship Subdivision has three teams in the five boroughs. Fordham plays at Jack Coffey Field with a capacity of 7,000, Wagner plays at Hameline Field at Wagner College Stadium with a capacity of 4,000, and Columbia plays at Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium with a capacity of 17,000. The stadium names and capacities came from Wikipedia, so don't blame me for how long the stadium names are.
The German Football Association has officially put forward its President, Reinhard Grindel, for a seat on the FIFA Council ... Grindel wants to be elected both to the FIFA Council and the UEFA executive committee in April with a view to putting German influence back on the political agenda following the fallout from the World Cup scandal. However, this does raise the question of whether Grindel would be representing German interests first, rather than European ones, if he was elected to the FIFA Council by European associations to represent European interests ... Earlier this month he said it was time to do away with the Confederations Cup, the traditional World Cup warm-up tournament, to ease fixture congestion and allow elite players to have a decent rest the summer before the World Cup itself.
Yes, but did he tell Mamelodi Sundowns representatives that he wants 2019 at Soccer City in Johannesburg? So I guess this rumor also points towards a summer CWC? December in NY doesn't make sense - does it?
Why wouldn't you believe it? Giving players more rest is actually a topic in Germany. It's the reason why Löw wants to take a B-team to the Confederations Cup next summer. What new tournament are you thinking of anyway?
I'm willing to understand that line of reasoning - and even more in the cases of Chile and Mexico. But how does replacing the Confed Cup with an expanded Club World Cup benefit the players? Assuming the latter has at least four European clubs participating, that's nearly twice as many elite players who have to give up a summer vacation.
Germany is also against expanding the WC for reasons of quality and work load. FIFA apparently promised that at least it wouldn't impact the players. See here: http://www.espnfc.com/fifa-world-cu...grindel-warns-over-48-team-world-cup-workload DFB president Grindel's position: Grindel, speaking after a meeting with FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura, told reporters: "I highlighted that there should be no extra workload for the player, and that the [length of the] tournament should not be stretched." Infantino has promised that the new format would have "no downside for the players, and no downside for the clubs because the calendar isn't impacted." Löw's position: But speaking in October, Germany coach Joachim Low said he did not back the idea of expanding tournaments. "The best teams should be at the World Cup and the European Championship," he said. "If you keep on raising numbers, there is a watering-down of quality."
The five boroughs do have big stadiums, but its a big league city that doesn't care so much about college sports. But Yankees stadium and CitiField are probably too small for a CWC final and too big for a CAF v AFC -type matchup. So just makes sense to use the stadiums in Harrison and East Rutherford, NJ.
We got a whole thread dedicated to the proposed World Cup expansion. Let's leave this one for the CWC and Confederations Cup.
Corporate stadium names change too often in the US for anyone to be held responsible for using them. It's one name until that company gets bought, goes broke, or gets rebranded or whatever. New Meadowlands is fine, or I go with "the NFL stadium in whatever city (in this case, New York, or New Jersey). I believe the Denver NFL stadium is on its 4th name in 15 years.
This isn't just an American thing. Here in Sydney the home ground of the current NRL Champions Cronulla is on its 10th name in 50 years since Cronulla entered the competition.
Even if a stadium kept the same commercial name for 100 years I would still always call the stadium by its original name. Not gonna whore myself out to a corporation for no reason.
With the World Cup expansion to 48 teams all but approved (I expect the FIFA Congress to waive it through) this means an additional 368 players will be away from their clubs in the summer of 2026. I would now expect FIFA to scrap the Confederations Cup as a gesture of goodwill towards the clubs.
The tournament is a decent idea, but I just question how many teams are actually going to give a shit and how many of the bigger ones are just going to treat it as their pre season summer tour. This seems like it'd be a far bigger tournament for the smaller teams than the bigger ones.
At the current rate of expansion for NT tournaments I think we are just one 2020 "Centenario" away from that happening. Any inflated CWC tournament will need to have the prize money to back it up.
Most of those 368 don't have the packed fixture schedules or even play regularly for the "big" clubs.
The issue with an expanded Club World Cup is that many fans around the world will have noone to root for. If Bayern Munich and Barcelona qualify, Italian and English fans won't care. If Flamengo qualifies, Vasco da Gama, Fluminense and Botafogo fans won't care.
Rummenigge also not friendly towards the CWC: http://www.insideworldfootball.com/...etter-kill-off-fifas-club-world-cup-try-grow/ I don't mind his idea of less international breaks (but longer ones).