Agreed. The more teams you allow into the World Cup, the more difficult the logistics become. The obvious answer is to use fewer stadiums, but more frequently (there's no reason a stadium can't host a match every 2-3 days, for example). That said, fewer stadiums decreases the opportunities for construction-related graft and corruption, which is a key factor in many bids. But if FIFA wants 12 or more stadiums for each World Cup, you're probably limited to the USA or China as single-country hosts. Even a multi-country African bid would be economically wasteful, since I'm not sure that there's a single country in Africa that has large enough league attendances to justify building more than one World-Cup sized/quality stadium. Pretty much every stadium built for World Cup 2010 outside of Johannesburg is now a slowly deteriorating white elephant.
I think a couple of them have deteriorated due to the cost of maintenance but most of the stadiums are used for rugby union which is their wealthiest sport. Something like 8 of the 10 World Cup stadiums are part of their rugby union world cup bid.
Yeah, I think for the 2010 WC the positives outweighed the negatives. The white elephants was the main negative of that WC, I would say. And they're not that "white" as you say. Though they are certainly elephants. ( I somewhat doubt they get more than 10 or 15k to attend those rugby union matches on average). Starting with WC 2014 I think the negatives began outweighing the positives, peaking in 2022 where there are arguably only negatives. But in 2026 I think the trend will reverse itself again towards more positives.
...but can you imagine the howls if the field ends up less than pristine by the third game in a week?
One issue is that club rugby union attendances have collapsed since 2014. Maybe that's because of the huge stadiums.
Probably more to do with the way the laws of the game and their interpretation have changed. It's become a pretty boring sport over the last 20 years.
It was pretty boring before then. Between the great Welsh team of the 1970s and the professionalism of the 1990s the number of tryless internationals, especially in the 5 nations, was overwhelming. But people go to international games to get drunk so nobody cared.
We had a good period here in the south in the 90's when Super Rugby started with lots of flowing Rugby and tries but then the rules guys in the northern hemisphere didn't like that and turned the game back into a rolling maul where penalty kicks decided who won the close games. By the mid 2000's the game was one where the ball was always under contest (it's slogan here when competing with rugby league) but rarely seen by the spectators as it was usually stuck inside a mass of large bodies for most of the game. Then the referee would blow his whistle for something no one understood (including the players) and someone would take a kick at goal.
FIFA could move to federation wide World cups. It also gets rid of the host country spot. Have a UEFA world cup, followed by an Africa world cup, follow by a Conmebol WC, the UEFA again (other wise they would cry), then Asia, then Concacaf (US and friends really). Only Oceania gets screwed.
Nah, having it in a small group of neighboring countries is better for the fan experience and tournament atmosphere. If there are more than three hosts though, no automatic qualifications imo.
It would have to be UEFA, CONMEBOL, UEFA, CAF, UEFA, CONCACAF, UEFA, AFC. Not that it's going to happen.
Agreed. In UEFA's case, its just not necessary to have it confederation-wide. What would be the "pros" of that? AFC is simply too large and covers too many time zones even if you exclude Australia. And also not really necessary as its fairly easy to think of combinations of 2 to 4 countries that can host together with minimal need for new stadiums to be built. e.g. Japan-Korea (again), Malaysia-Singapore-Indonesia-Australia, China and anyone. Again, what are the "pros" of having it AFC-wide over any of those 3 options?? Will find out in December 2022 when its more like 4 games in a week in a given stadium.
I think every 3rd for UEFA. More like UEFA CONMEBOL CAF UEFA CONCACAF AFC. Continent wide wouldn't work for some due to distances time zones etc but restricting it to a region within a confederation would eg AFC have five regional organisations within it and hosting could be within each zone. Not sure how you could fit OFC in. If AFC was feeling kind maybe New Zealand could host a group if they held it in the south east region. Would probably need to be a 64 team cup before that happened.as there are already 12 nations in that region. Probably need to require hosting nations to qualify though.
Everyone not resident in the U.S. and Canada can book their tickets to Mexico in 2026. Even the athletes can't get into the U.S. for World's. Any bets on which team get's denied entry to the U.S. in 2026 after failing to apply in advance, thinking they wouldn't get out of the Mexico-based group? https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...mpionships-visa-trouble-athletes/10057519002/ P.S. The Canadians are currently no better at visa processing; an HIV conference is proving that.
this time there is one good thing for people from countries with usa visa requirement and they should think about that and use it well in advance. usa is usually issuing 10 years multiple entry visas, so everyone‘s got four years time to find the best way to get one. be it a business travel, sponsored visit, paid tourism round trip or anything else, and once you‘ve got your us visa you easilly get canadian one for transit into us AND to enter canada for as long as your us visa or passport is valid, whatever comes first. I am aware most people start thinking about this when world cup is close but it is big advantage compared to many other visas that get issued for one entry or for shorter period of time (6 months or one year are common)! I am also aware there are countries whose people us government simply does not like to welcome, and these countries might well qualify for the world cup, but that‘s another problem, much bigger than just going to the game….
In theory it would be groupings of countries. Like say a North Africa WC with 5 countries hosting for CAF, or a East Africa WC. A East Asia WC (China can probably hold it on their own if they want). A South Asia WC, an Arab World cup, a Stanistan WC for AFC. South America could rotate 5 countries hosting each time they get it. (Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador) then (Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay). Europe could do 4 or 5 groupings West, East, North, South and maybe 'center' WC.
What's the point though when surely its better for everyone to simply have an entire WC in the U.K. or Spain-Portugal or Germany-Netherlands, etc. ?
Too many stadiums are required for a bigger tournament (if you are not Qatar), it would give smaller countries a chance to maybe host a few games.
I guess. Depends how you define "small" but I just gave some examples of how what I would call small European countries (Portugal, Netherlands, Scotland, etc.) can co-host a WC fairly easily along with just 1 other (big) country. No need for a whole chunk of Europe to share hosting duties IMO.
Potential FWC 48 team hosts: UEFA England 16 stadiums (with upgrades*) Germany 16 AFC China up to 40 Japan 16 CONMEBOL Argentina/Uruguay 16 (with upgrades*) CAF Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia up to 20 By upgrades I mean adding a maximum of 3,000 seats to make capacity up to 40k.
Asia’s pathway to the FIFA World Cup 2026 and AFC Asian Cup™ 2027 confirmed (the-afc.com) AFC announces the method of qualification to determine the 8 representatives and 1 playoff team for 2026. A knockout stage, followed by 9 groups of 4, followed by 3 groups of 6. Top 2 of each group qualify, 3rd and 4th placed teams fight it out for the last 2 spots and the playoff spot.
Terrible. 11 teams - nearly a quarter of the AFC's membership - will be eliminated from the WC the best part of 3 years before the event having played only 2 matches.
It is indeed terrible, but when is this happening, please? I really want to follow the qualifiers for United 2026 from the start if at all possible.
I know it doesn't justify this method, but CONCACAF used to eliminate some reasonably decent teams early in the cycle too. But the bottom 11 in AFC are really bad teams, I don't see a big issue in this. Look at the current bottom 11 and their world ranking: Nepal - 176 Macau - 182 Laos - 183 Mongolia - 184 Bhutan - 186 Brunei Darussalam - 190 Bangladesh - 192 Pakistan - 196 Timor-Leste - 199 Guam - 205 Sri Lanka - 207 even the next 11 above those teams that would participate in the 36 team round aren't very good: Hong Kong Malaysia Kuwait Yemen Afghanistan Indonesia Maldives Chinese Taipei Myanmar Singapore Cambodia I don't see this as that terrible. There is a reasonable path for even those bottom 11 to get into the 36 team WCQ tournament as those teams above them all look beatable. And there are other tournaments like the Asian Cup.