Again, a lot of evasive, inconclusive gibberish. Of course it's about how FIFA is run! FIFA is clearly corrupt from the top down. THAT's how Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 WC! No other philanthropic or altruistic reasons - pure corruption - as is now being proved, if you can be bothered to read it. Which I doubt that you will as it doesn't reach the conclusions that you want to hear. OF course the WC has never been awarded to a Middle East country before. The conditions, stability of the region, etc, all mitigate against it. As I've already explained, corruption or no corruption, FIFA could at least come up with a credible rationale for the selection of both USA and Japan/Korea. Where they have finally shot themselves in the foot, and exposed their organisation for what it really is, is by getting too arrogant and greedy for their own good. The farcical, ludicrous decision to award the WC to tiny, coincidentally fabulously rich, state will prove to be their undoing. It is you that misses the point. As I have said, the awards to USA, Japan/ Korea, Russia could all be given a logical explanation. The selection of Qatar was always going to be an insult too far that was bound to invite close scrutiny of the process by which the decision was reached. Far closer scrutinity than FIFA, in their self satisfied complacency, can withstand.
Pardon me for being "evasive" when answering questions and "inconclusive" when coming to valid conclusions. Apparently all discussions about FIFA should involve blinkered, simplistic arguments. I'm going to keep saying this until it sinks in: awarding a World Cup to a nation that does not have a professional football league at the time it is awarded the tournament nor at the time when it staged the tournament does not make the slightest bit of sense, so there is no credible rationale for the USA being awarded the 1994 tournament. Where FIFA has shot themselves in the foot has nothing to do with Qatar, and everything to do with ignoring their own criteria for selective a World Cup host, namely the criteria about safety and security concerns for fans. They didn't break those rules with the Qatar bid - but they did when the nation with the 11th highest murder rate in the world is awarded the 2010 tournament, followed by the nation with the 18th highest murder rate in the world being awarded the 2014 tournament. To date, it is said that Qatari officials bribed three FIFA delegates. While that is evidence of corruption at FIFA, that is not evidence of Qatar buying the World Cup - as is the fact, which you completely ignored, that Qatar received less votes in the second round of votes than they did in the first. Then again, I can presume you didn't even read that part - just like you presumably didn't read the part about Holland/Belgium being asked to make FIFA's takings for the 2018 tournament tax exempt, so three guesses what Qatar said which arrangements they'd be happy to make with FIFA? That's not corruption, though - that's greed.
The US had to establish the MLS as part of the deal that took the World Cup to their shores. Bringing such a league to roughly 350m in North America was probably a major factor in giving them the tournament. It appears to have worked, too. No such motivation can be applied to the Qatar bid. There are more people in the West Midlands. It has the second lowest population in the Middle East.
I seem to remember that the Qatari league has a lot of money in it and became a bit of a retirement home for players. Not sure what state it's in now but they signed Hierro and a number of others to the league early on as they tried to make it the best league in the World. The obvious difference between that and the MLS though is that the MLS sides actually make money and aren't just a vanity project for some of the rich people that rule the country. Qatar also have homophobic laws and a dreadful human rights record so hosting a World Cup there should have been a non-starter.
If it's worked, then why is... Vancouver Whitecaps' stadium 63% empty? Chivas USA's stadium 69% empty? DC United's stadium 70% empty? New England Revolution's stadium 78% empty? Also, why did... Toronto move to a stadium that was 50% smaller? Montreal move to a stadium that is 70% smaller? San Jose move to a stadium that was 80% smaller? It says a lot that two new franchises being mooted for MLS include a team bankrolled by the Yankees and Man City (who are buying players for the team) and David Beckham's vanity project in Miami - where one team has already gone to the wall, in fact two teams have gone bust in Florida since MLS's inception.
They're not. BC Place has a capacity of 21,000 for the Whitecaps and their average attendance was 20,038 last season. You seem to be using the larger capacity available for American Football. Similar situations are in place for the other sides that you've mentioned. Toronto haven't moved. They play the majority of their games at BMO Field, as they have since 2007. They play bigger games at The Rodgers Center. Montreal played some games at the Olympic Stadium, as the Saputo wasn't finished. They didn't move to a smaller stadium, either. San Jose are actually moving to a custom built stadium that's over 50% bigger. It should be ready for 2015. They haven't moved to a smaller ground. Not sure where you've got these stats from. Attendances are up, TV deals are always increasing and the standard's rising consistently. Football's now the 4th largest sport in the country and the second highest attended. The idea that a something similar will happen in Qatar is simply not a factor.
When an MLS team plays at a stadium where 60% of the stadium is closed off, that's not a good advertisement for MLS attendances. San Jose's new stadium will have a capacity of 18,000 - which is smaller than the Standford or the Levi's stadium they have been using for the past several years Montreal did move to a smaller stadium - the Olympic stadium is bigger than Saputo Stadium, is it not? Before saying attendances are up, perhaps you should read this first: http://mlsattendance.blogspot.co.uk/ The following teams have all seen a decrease in attendance this season: LA Galaxy, New York Red Bulls, New England Revolution, San Jose Earthquakes, Seattle Sounders, Columbus Crew, Colorado Rapids, Chivas USA, DC United, Houston Dynamo, Philadelphia Union. That's over half the teams in MLS who have seen their attendances drop this season, while the average attendance across the whole of MLS is down on what it was last year so, no, attendances are not up - they're down the exact opposite. Also, the average attendance of MLS is only marginally higher than that of the Chinese Super League, and when I say "marginally" the difference is just 67 fans. As for MLS being the fourth-biggest sport in the USA, here's the total attendances of every sport in the US last year: Major League Baseball: 74.9m NHL: 21.5m NFL: 17.1m NBA: 17.1m MLS: 6.1m Not only is it a lie to say MLS is the fourth-biggest sport in the US, but even as the fifth-biggest it is 1/3 as popular as the NFL or NBA. Also, why is it not a factor that football in Qatar will improve after the World Cup? If the quality improved in the USA after 1994, and in Japan and South Korea after 2002, then why is it unfeasible that Qatar might improve as a football team?
Drag racing is popular in the USA. could be an outside bet for the top four, although most just go for the hot chicks and beer!
I'm afraid you're starting to bore me. You keep repeating the same pointless nonsense. Suffice to say that the awarding of the world's premier football tournament to a , co incidentally fabulously rich, giant boling sandpit with the population of Birmingham, is a sick, corrupt joke. That much is now in the process of being exposed for the entire world to see. The whole world that lives in the real whole world, that is. You clearly don't!
FIFA is institutionally rotten to the bone. The Qatar thing has merely exposed this. Now it comes down to : - who within FIFA stood to gain most from it (GREED) - what extent those people acted to ensure the Qatar bid was the winner (CORRUPTION)
The club was formed five years ago and you're moaning that they're only averaging a little over 20,000 attendances? Really? The Standford and Levi aren't San Jose's stadium, they just play the odd game in them. The same applies to Montreal's temporary move to the Olympic Stadium. It's like saying that Arsenal moved to a smaller ground when they went to The Emirates, because they played a few games at Wembley in the CL. Average attendances for the full season are up. You're using half a season, for some reason. You're also using overall attendances for the NHL, who have 50% more teams playing an average of about 40 home games each, utterly distorting the comparison. The fact that there's even a comparison to be had, given that the league is so young, shows that you don't have a point. Who's talking about improvements to the national team? You know very well that's not what's being discussed here. Promoting a sport to around 2 million people simply doesn't compare to the 350m in North America or the 175m in Japan and South Korea. It's utterly ludicrous to suggest as much. Edit: Just to add one other point. You're claiming that the fact that "only" 6.1m people attended a game in the MLS last season doesn't show that it's been successful. That's around three times the total population of Qatar. What's their overall league attendance going to be like?
Their title winners, the Boston Red Sox, played 162 games last season. I'm not comparing the MLS to MLB though, obviously.
But do you know if the £75m figure is skewed by the number of games in the same way the NHL ones are? "Soccer" is very popular with the ladies over there i understand. It might even be number 1, not 100% sure
Quote from a lead article in Private Eye this week, which has been highlighting FIFA corruption for years. The article highlights the ongoing commercial arrangement around the WC ticket franchise made between FIFA and 2 brothers from Cheadle who have already been caught out in a ticket corruption scandal which also involved that paragon of virtue, Jack Warner. "2 years ago Blatter Snr gave a company jointly owned by the Byrom Brothers and his nephew Phillipe a LOAN of £6.2m from FIFA to provide accomodation services for the 2014 WC Brazil. Better still, the loan was Interest-free and oddly this deal has still not been reported in FIFA's accounts........."
Don't insult my intelligence. In order to be "bored" with something you have to actually read it in the first place. If you did read what I had told you, you would have dropped the simplistic idiocy that says every one of FIFA's ills boils down to corruption, which is not the case in any way. No, I'm asking why they don;t even try to fill the other 60% of the stadium. First of all, simple question: have San Jose played games in those stadiums, yes or now? The second question is whether the Emirates is 1/3 the size of Wembley, yes or no? Do those numbers show that eleven of the nineteen MLS clubs have seen their attendances drop in the 2014 season? Do those numbers show that the average attendance across all of MLS has dropped in the 2014 season? Secondly, there is no distortion. In the NFL a team will play 16 regular season games plus either three or four games in the play-offs (based on whether they qualified outright or have to go through the wildcard) for a maximum number of twenty games. In MLS there's a 34 game regular season, plus the play-offs where the quarters and semis are over two legs before the final, for a maximum number of 39 games. MLS playing twice the number of games that the NFL does, yet attracting a third the number of fans, shows there is no distortion there. Who was talking about improvements in national football, you ask? Let me remind you: "Attendances are up, TV deals are always increasing and the standard's rising consistently. Football's now the 4th largest sport in the country and the second highest attended. The idea that a something similar will happen in Qatar is simply not a factor." You said it. So, again, how is it implausible that the quality of Qatari football, not the national team but the overall quality of football in Qatar, could improve by them staging the World Cup? In a little over ten years European clubs have stopped thinking of Japanese players as a quick way to make cash off the Far Eastern market to players who will actually make a valid contribution to various top teams across Europe, so why can't that be the case with Qatari players? Apart from the obvious reason: the worry that the Qatari squad may start to be made up of Senegalese, Thai and Guatemalan players based in the ASPIRE Academy benefiting from Qatar's rather casual relationship with what qualifies as "naturalisation" - but FIFA will doubtless overlook that one because it'd lead to awkward questions about Diego Costa. You should look up the definition of the word "owned" before making stupid comments.
There are several separate issues mixed up here. is FIFA corrupt - yes do most world cup bid teams act accordingly - yes is there a list of agreed criteria for a host nation that Qatar demonstrably fails to meet - no
Oh! Bullshit! As I, and others have pointed out to you, the vast majority of what you've said is completely pointless - or deliberately evasive, at best. I don't doubt your intelligence, but I do doubt your seeming propensity to try and politicise even the simplest subjects. In conclusion, if you don't wish to be treated as a fool, stop behaving like one!
