Every country that is considered a developed country today has been built on the blood of others. Ignore that at your peril. At least the (illegal) immigrants in Qatar are getting paid , and had a choice. Syrians and Iraqis didn't have that courtesy. And UK & US politicians are responsible for it directly. Saudis are shredding Yemenis every day. I don't hear anyone boycotting that. So yea, I am going to Qatar. Don't come. More tickets for the rest of the world that is too poor to visit.
Ha! Yeah, its just that being in the U.S during a WC is a major downer. I don't want to be surrounded by people talking about Tom Brady during a World Cup.
What on earth are you droning on about? Every developed country has blood on it's hands, of course it does. So let's just ignore it cuz everyone else did it centuries ago? Our ancestors were arseholes, no doubt. We try and better ourselves by removing ignorance. Why are you talking about Saudi Arabia and Yemen? That's a terrible situation but you seem to be using it as justification for what Qatar does.
I have been to the last 4 WCs. But I don't see a huge amount of similarly between Germany and Qatar. I'm willing to bet you're pretty much alone on that view. FWIW, I'm not a fan at all of the 2026 United host. At the same time, that doesn't mean I'm a big fan of the extreme opposite. My ideal is something in the middle (like Germany or Russia) Experiencing all of these things was not a problem in Russia. You do realize that train travel is at the heart of Russian culture, right? Simply wrong.
Yes. I was on multiple long-distance trains. Yet I could only hit 3 cities in Russia. You can't just be 26 hours on a train and have a good world cup. As you said, balance. Germany and Russia are not alike. In Germany - I was in Dusseldorf, Heidelberg, Franfurt, Berlin, Leipzig, Koln, Dortmund, and i think Hannover and Dresden IIRC. That's 9 cities. In Japan, I was in Tokyo, Sendai, Urawa, Niigata, Yokohama, Miyazaki, Osaka, Saitama, Sapporo (ice cream!). Also 9 cities. Yet, I spent less time traveling between cities in Germany and Japan, than in Russia. Despite hitting triple the number of cities. Moreover, in GER / JAP, you could go anywhere, on a whim. A fan sold you his extra ticket ? You got on a train, bus or van and went to the match. Just like that. Do that in Russia ? pray for transportation. Forums littered with BS posters passing up games due to travel limitations. No planes in Japan. No planes in Germany. Short distances between cities. That's how it *should* be. Bring on Qatar!
What ancestors? Syrians, Afghanis, and Iraquis are DYING TODAY. I don't see anyone in these forums asking to boycot USA 2026 or a UK bid for a world cup !! (which your country tried for 2018, and lost). That strikes me as unabashed hypocrisy. Yes, that's the elephant in the room. USA 2026.. Some should look at themselves at the mirror before pointing fingers elsewhere. Don't mix football and politics. And if you do, be consistent.
You're contradicting yourself. Earlier you said traveling on public transport with fellow fans is a great way to meet people from all over the world and a big part of the World Cup experience. Now you're saying it ruins the whole experience. Also, 26 hours is a major exaggeration. Even Samara to Moscow is only 14 hrs and you bypass 3 host cities on the way, so that would be an extreme case. Mostly we're talking 8-14 hour trips and you do it overnight so you really don't lose much time. Anyway, agree to disagree on this. Enjoy $14 beer night in Qatar.
As for WC improvements: 1) VAR has increased the value of set pieces, defenders are more cautious to foul in set pieces, which increased the value of athletes (tall & strong jumpers) and decreased the value of footballers (short & talented). Umtiti is a defender and got France to gold. Same goes for final-4 PKane and free kicks. This is a worrying trend. If i wanted to see set piece action , i would watch american football. So an obvious thing is to do away with penalties immediately preceding set piece play. Doesn't matter what happens : handball, freekick etc, a foul in the box leads to an indirect free kick. That's it. Never a PK. No huge reward in PK. So now footballers have a fighting chance (yes, even if by pulling a shirt etc) of not conceding against the Umtitis and Ramos of the world. Eliminate the freakout scramble during set pieces by making it semi-legal to do rough contact. This on a macro level would achieve 2 things: - make it harder to "park the bus" since teams could not count on an isolated set piece to score. - decrease players diving on the area, since doing so only yields an indirect FK, not a PK. 2) Please, no 48 teams. It would devalue the qualifiers 3) Too many players time-wasting and diving still happening. FIFA should be able to caution or suspend players *post-match*. Fixate a rule that if a player is not injured and he spends more than cumulative X seconds/minutes on the ground, eventually stopping play, automatic yellow (or worse, ban) post-match. Of course, if the play doesn't stop for aiding the player, then it would not count. If someone is really injured, they can leave the pitch. Time is not counted for injuries resulting in substitution. OP mentioned creating a rule banning immediate return for stretched-off players... but that only makes really injured players not wanting to leave, and potentially hurting themselves more in the process.
After the group stage has ended I would create a draw for the 1st place and 2nd place teams like Champions League so teams can stop losing to get to the easier side of the bracket.
I thought about this in the past, but I think the reason why they don't do this is to make travel plans more straightforward for fans. I.e. right now, you know from the moment of the draw where your team will play if it finishes first/second in the group, so you can plan months in advance. You cannot do this if you have a draw at the end of the group stage to determine the knockout stage matchups. I think that's the thought process, anyway. I don't personally have any experience attending a WC or any other major tournament, so I don't speak with any real expertise. Setting that aside, how would you do the draw? Generally speaking, the idea is that there should be an advantage to finishing first in the group, so I guess you'd probably have the group winners in one pot and the runners-up in the other.
You do have a point in that traveling plans would be much more difficult in that scenario. I would place first group teams in a pot and second place teams in a pot then just draw them.
I mean the lack of 0-0 games doesn't speak to average goal scoring which has never went north of 2.97 goals since 1958 and even that number in 1970 was a positive outlier. The tournament(and all international tournament's for that matter) has also expanded since then and the lesser quality of teams in the early rounds hasn't really changed averages suggesting play has only gotten more defensive and compensated for this, especially in the knockout rounds where the teams who don't really belong are sorted out. 2014 and 2018 were better than most but the international soccer tournament goal averages are still pretty low. I mean of course I can agree with the limited offside change you made. In terms of the one brain thing VAR and more technology should make this doable. Reason I added penalty box is to prevent that one player from hovering by the penalty box, don't think it would be too hard to keep track of, seeing a guy camping out by the opposing goal should stick out. Of course the biggest change that can be made is to go back to the old formations but that isn't going to happen. I'm not sure if things were exactly the same when offsides was introduced which was a bit earlier but in the early days of the WC, teams usually had five forwards and two defenders which is no longer the case and the conditions that led to that rule being implemented no longer exist and the pendulum has swung pretty far in the other direction.
7 out of the 8 groups have one of the seven highest-ranked (at the time of draw) teams participating in the world cup. Each half of the bracket has 4 group winners. So each half of the bracket has 3 or 4 teams that are either seeded or have outperformed the seeded team in the group stages. That, by no means, is an easy bracket.
Maybe not easy, but certainly easier. Thus the incentive to lose to get placed in it. Yeah that’s one important factor. The other one is that there would need to be 3 or 4 off days after the end of the group stage. Currently there is just one.
Not happening in Qatar. The tournament is being reduced to 28 days to marginally reduce the impact on the club seasons.
Never going to happen, 'cause FIFA wouldn't have the balls to back the refs up, the refs would get lynched by the press and we'd go back to the status quo in two weeks.
Well, there's always allowing VAR to notify a referee if/when a dive happens. I wouldn't want VAR to review every foul, but it's usually pretty obvious when a player goes down without contact.
Right, but going to the extreme of making it a straight-red offense will blow up spectacularly unless FIFA is 100% committed to the change.
Oh, I agree. Going to straight red for dives is a bad thing (unless its in the box? Call it Creating an Obvious Goal Scoring Opportunity or COGSO) I'm just saying adding dives to the list and whipping out the yellow more often.
Actually, I agree. A straight red would probably be a bad thing. But, players simply aren't afraid of a yellow card that stays in the pocket. FIFA and the refs are responsible for that. Red cards for diving would stop (or significantly decrease) the behavior. If you noticed, there were almost as many dives around the penalty box as there were inside. I'm not sure distinguishing between a dive in the box from a dive outside the box would correct the behavior. Those set up dangerous free kicks, and this past WC had far too many set-piece goals. My suggestions were to encourage keeping the game out of the ref's hands. Either the players need to respect the yellows or the red cards need to fly. Either way, the diving is marring the game and needs to stop.
If you think yellow cards stay in the pocket, it’ll be worse with reds. Referees are hesitant to influence games that much and would largely avoid the red except for the most egregious of dives.
Workers dying in their thousands building the stadia has little to do with politics. You can't compare that with UK-US-middle Eastern politics, and use that as a justification as to why Qatar is all fine and dandy. Your logic is so sprawling and sporadic that I don't even know where to begin picking it apart. I guess some have morals and some don't #shrug P.S I actually agree with a lot of your ideas regarding changes
Apart from the endless moral reasons against Qatar just how are their going to be enough hotel rooms, restaurants, airports and all the necessary people to work in them. Also a sufficient number of police and or Military. Even down to the huge number of volunteers. Over 17,000 in Russia. Where are they going to come from and stay? Housing 32 teams and their entourages is a challenge anyway especially in a country the size of Yorkshire. Bearing in mind FIFA saw no problem of playing in 50C initially I would be very surprised if all these logistical challenges have been fully thought through. If Moscow was full to bursting how the hell will Doha manage?
It's up to FIFA and the various referees associations to make sure they don't. A summer of red cards in 2021 with no public mandate from FIFA to 'let them play' would put a stop to diving in the next World Cup, in my opinion.
The choice of Qatar as World Cup hosts had no merit on any level. That doesn't mean that I find anything but hypocritical some of the human rights and worker condition issues that are overemphasized. Nor does it mean that at this late stage I would endorse a change of venue, particularly since such a change after the Saudi-Qatari feud wouldn't look right to me. But none of that changes the fact that I wouldn't even take the idea of Qatar being a legitimate aspirant to one day host the World Cup seriously, much less discover that they were actually chosen as the 2022 hosts!