I love it when the World Cup is being played. This past WC we would stay up all night watching as many matches as we could. Unfortunately it only lasts one month and then you find yourself having to wait another four years. I'm not sure if it would make the tournament seem less important though if it was every two years but I rather it be played every two. I'm sure it would be a pain in the ass to have to organize. What do you think?
NO Unless of course, you want to ruin the meaning, novelty and excitement of it all..... Its that long wait which makes the month so good. And if it was every 2 years, where would that leave space for continental tournaments? Plus, it would be near impossible to organise.
Part of the reason that it is special is that it happens only once every 4 years. Every 2 years would create all sorts of issues. For starters, it would cause problems with all the regional tournies. If the WC gets played in 2006 and 2008, when do you play for the uefa cup? 2007? And if that's the case, when do you hold qualifying for it? Right before or right after the WC? Do you pack in the qualifiers for the eufa cup during the clubs season? If so, how is that not going to cause more conflict for the big clubs that already play domestically on the weekends and then in european compeitions during the week? And how do you go about holding all those qualifying matches before the WC if it's every 2 years? I don't like it because it's just too much of the world cup. It would likely kill off or cheapen regional tournments. More so, I'd be worried that some of the biggest players in the game would shy away from national team play altogether. You could ease some of those issues by reducing number of teams in the tournament. I'd even consider accepting it if the format went to a straight knock out.
That's another great point. A lot of time, effort and resources goes into preparing for one of these and then executing it.
No, leave it the way it is. Schedule should be 2004 Continental Championships 2005 Confederations Cup 2006 World Cup 2007 Women's World Cup 2008 Continental Championships 2009 Confederations Cup 2010 World Cup ... and so on. Club World Cup to be created from Intercontinental Cup, 6 team tourney held over 1 week.
I can see your points but I still would like to reduce the number of years maybe three. You would have to change the format a bit but you have to lose something to get something. It's easier for someone living in Europe or even South America to argue against this idea. In the United States the WC is the only international tournament they show ....... Oh wait the Gold Cup. How did I forget that great tournament. If not two what about three? I think three could be managed. I don't think they ever will but I can dream.
Maybe if we get the Mexicans or Uncle Phil to run CONCACAF we can make the Gold Cup a respectable tournament. As much as it's nice for everything to be run for the U.S., it's hard to tell Europe and South America that they should change everything to suit a country that could mostly care less about the sport.
It would be too much on the players physiques. Rememeber. Although there isn't a world cup every year, there's still qualifying matches to be played. Then you've got the other world tourney's. Well continental i should say. e'g EURO 2004 Portugal. (Which is just as entertaining, It's basically the WC without Brazil and Argentina) There's already a large amount of club v country conflict going on. Bi-yearly would near kill the vibe. It would be a bunch of fatigued, un-focused players just mucking about.
In a word: No. In two words: Hell No. In three words: Hell F'n No. In four words: Hell F'n No, dammit. In five words: Hell F'n No, God dammit. In six words: Hell F'n No, God F'n dammit. This thread has already come up at least four times in the one year I've been here, and nobody can still make a single argument for having a World Cup more frequently then once every four years. If you can bring some argument to the table that would make somebody change their mind (rather then: I really like the World Cup but hate waiting so long for it), then create a new thread. Until that time, just look at the first six lines of this thread and repeat them to yourself over and over.
Sepp Blaetter must love to go fishing, 'cause he opened a can of worms with this one. Sepp, nein is not the number before ten! It just means 'no.'
well if ur a concacaf team you would now have to play upwards of 18-22 games every three years instead of every four (2 or 4 first round matches from prelim groups of 2 or 3) (6 second round matches from 3 groups of 4) (10 hexagonal matches) (0 or 2 aggregate playoff matches against asian team depending how low u finish) that is at least 18 matches to qualify, in most cases 20, and in one case possibly 22. That's too much in the span of 4 years, let alone 3. total of anywhe
“Waiting for it makes it better” is a very weak argument. Let’s then have it every 16 years ,that would make it really great. The purpose of creating the WC was to determine the best NT in the world. At the time the only way to do it was to bring the teams to one place and you could do that only every our years. Do we need to bring all the teams to one place today? No. That serves absolutely no purpose. The best NT should be determined through home and away matches, first inside the continents, than between the winners/RU of the continental competition. And it could be done every year while reducing the number of games. There would be no need for qualifiers. The teams that perform worst would be replaced from their continents lower division.
Oh come on. Then you have actually destroyed the world cup. I hate this notion of the world cup as a means of establishing the best team in the world. It was NOT intended to be anything of the sort, it was conceived of as a means by which to celebrate the emergence of the sport as a truly global passion. It was a spectacle, a centrepiece, a celebration. The fact that it now universally represents the process by which the best team in the world is established is neither here nor there. That’s a cute little side effect. The key to the world cup – and to it’s enduring popularity is that it retains this celebratory mandate and mentality. To turn it into some disparate, localised home-and-away bore-a-thon, just so all the anoraks out there can say “now it’s more empirical” would be a crime against the sport. Who on earth cares who the best team in the world RIGHT NOW is? Only people who take the FIFA rankings seriously. People who should have been drowned at birth, in other words. To answer the original point – the world cup is fine as it is. The fact that you miss the spectacle and the occasion of a major interntaional football tournament is not to be addressed by cheapening the World Cup. Nor is the answer to make other confederations acquiese to this need for North America (and/or Asia) to get more entertainment out of the sport through a more frequent staging of the WORLD cup. The answer is for North American (and/or Asian) teams, fans, federations, countries to work as hard as they can to support the sport in their region and to establish confederation championships that fulfill the needs that cause people to continually seek the easy way out and call for a biennial world cup. We have the European Championships and, in many ways, they are even better than the World Cup. The rest of the world should be inspired to create something similar for themselves and leave the world cup alone. It is perfect just the way it is.
Actually, the World Cup doesn't just last one month. It lasts for anywhere from 2 to nearly 3 years, depending on when qualifying starts. See, what you're talking about is the World Cup Finals which take place for one month every four years for what should be obvious reasons. Matt (or anyone else): On a note that I find more interesting: when did "anorak" become a term of abuse rather than just an article of clothing, and can you give a brief account of the development? Thanks.
Fans should hope that a WC every two years never comes to pass. The WC is FIFA's baby. There is already a great deal of hostility between clubs and federations about national team call ups. If you hold the WC every two years then you attack the cash cow that is the European Championship. Right now UEFA has their hands in both the club and country till. If you destroy or diminish the EC, then UEFA becomes an entity whose cash flow is based on club competitions only (or at least mainly). If you think the club vs. country arguments for releasing players are hostile now, try to imagine what would happen if the governing continental federation has no incentive to release players to FIFA events. UEFA has got to be kept heavily in the fold of international competitions.
It stems from the emergence of trainspotters. They are, I think, unique to this country (and our unique heritage of the eccentric … ) but they are basically people who stand on railway station platform all day, making note of train engine registration numbers. Some even photograph or video the trains. They are a harmless bunch, but obviously also a right bunch of spods. And they tend to wear anoraks. So the “anorak” is a pale, single lad with little or no interest in normal life but a strange obsession with “collection” trains.
Interesting. I never would've thought there was a connection w/ trainspotting. We actually have trainspotters (not called by that name, as anyone in the US who's familiar with that word usually thinks it pertains to a heroin habit, largely because they've seen the movie but haven't read Irvine Welsh's novel) in the US, though they tend to be retired, and the camara is a universal tool for them. No notebooks that I've ever seen. Occasional flasks and bottles in paper bags, though. For awhile there was an attempted crackdown on them around where I lived (security post-Sept. 11th), but then they decided old guys taking pictures might not pose much of a risk.
Was there a similar amount of passion in the stands in any world cup match as in the England-Turkey qualifier? Those are real matches. It just doesn’t smell like football when you put it into the sterile environment of a neutral country, even if there are a lot of traveling fans. Wouldn’t a England-Brazil WC QF be more fun if one game was played in London and the other in Rio? And it wouldn’t be dragged out. It could all be done in 5-6 weeks yearly interval reserved for international football. Maybe you like the WC as the Olympics of football(spectacle, a centrepiece, a celebration.). Allow me to disagree.
How many teams are playing in this tournament if it can be done in 5-6 weeks? And, umm. I don't want to watch a match played by two teams who've recently travelled from London to Rio or vice-versa. Jet leg makes for some crappy football.
OK, if you wanna know here’s how I would have it. 4 continental groups(Asia/Oceania,Americas,Africa, Europe) of four teams who play each other home and away. The top three from Europe, the top two from the Americas and Asia/Oceania, and the winner of the African group form the QF. The QF and the SF – two legs, final one game. The remaining teams on the continent play in the lower divisions and the winner comes in the place of the bottom team in that continent’s group for the next year. So it would be 11 games for the finalists. And those would be the only internationals during the year(plus a 1-2 friendlies before the competition
Aside from all the excellent counter-arguments that have already been put forward, there are other reasons why this is a bad idea. Holding the World Cup over the space on 4 weeks in a single country throws up all kinds of unexpected and unanticipated delights. You can get maverick teams pulling out fantastic results (Cameroon-Argentina in 1990, Senegal-France in 2002) as well as players having a wonderful burst of form (Scillachi in 90, Suker in 98) and a real feel that something special is taking place. Displacing the competition to various parts of the globe and spreading the matches out over a longer time span would lose all that. Yes, you might get a better idea of which team is the 'best' in the world, but is that really worth losing the absolute magic of the World Cup for? Not in my book.
England - Argentina? I'm betting there was more 'passion in the stands for most matches than, say, England - Liechtenstein. That analogy works equally well both ways and you know it. Rubbish. No. So it's a bit like a neutrally staged tournament, only it's hosted nowhere, not everyone gets to see the biggest games, there's no communal excitement, no global spirit BUT at the end of it the statto's all get to have a wank because the winner of this fractured, weak jamboree is a more empirical way of establishing who's 'best'. What a dreary vision. Feel free - allow most of the rest of the world to reciprocate.