I smelt a rat when they were first given the World Cup Finals and my mind has been virtually made up by the latest allegations. Whenever Jack Warner (CONCACAF) votes in favour of something to do with FIFA then something has to be considered not quite right. Placing the finals in a country where mid-summer temps can reach the high 40's is a no brainer and surely someone should have asked the question at the time as to why this totally out of touch country were awarded the prize. My doubts have always been on alert when it comes to FIFA and some of their decisions and having Blatter and Platini as their supposed top officials make me even more concerned about their commitment to due diligence. I consider the terrible 2 to be very anti-English and cannot understand for the life of me why England hasn't has a shout since 1966 when it comes to the awarding of the World Cup Finals. Should Qatar be stripped of the competition, and I don't think for a minute that they will, do you think England should be asked to step in to the breach and restore sanity to a situation that was always going to be a disaster?
Quite possibly a bit dodgy but at least Russia has a fairly decent premier league. Although racism appears to be a big problem there now. Mike, I believe you have hit the nail sweetly on the head.
It always appeared dodgy. Why on earth would you award a major competition to a minnow and then ask for it to be played in 40 degree heat. It was all about money, and backhanders as per usual. I'm all for it being spread around, but there are countries far more deserving that Qatar. Us for instance..!
Somebody saying to me "there may have been something dodgy about the world cup bid" is the same as saying "it might get a bit dark when the sun goes down tonight" With regard England 'stepping in'. The control of FIFA was ripped away from us due to the way we were perceived by the other nations of the world at that time. We are nowhere near as popular in world football as our media likes to portray us.!
They are all bent including the FA here. Too many crocodile tears going on. The FA have a history of playing other national XI who have FA' s who are proven to be corrupt. England's top division is all about money, and keeping it for themselves, England's world cup bid lost to another which had more money boo hoo buy the ticket take the ride. Platinni has tried to combat the the greed is good ethos of the EPL, and for that he is tarred as anti English, it's bull****. The media and others should be looking closer to home and the rancid running of football in this country.
England is one of the few countries, (not to have recently held the World Cup) that can step in if Russia is found guilty. Australia should've got the 2022 World Cup. It is hard to strip the World Cup from a country that is spending £220,000,000,000 holding it. (Quatar)
Regrettably I believe that I will never see the world cup played in GB in my lifetime. Forget the sorry state of English football at present (not as bad as Wales or Scotland mind you) but if we had been accused of major corruption, racism, worker exploitation, deaths due to poor safety standards, riots due to social unrest and violence at football matches I'm sure we would have been isolated and drummed out of international football and all the major football cups until we got our act together, why oh why doesn't this appear to happen to other nations, rather than a few fines or games played behind closed doors or stands being closed for one or two games. Or am I being paranoid and doesn't the rest of the world hate the country that gave them football in the first place
Is that Qatar, South Africa or Brazil? The World cup or an Olympics? England had an International fixture abandoned due to rioting but still hosted Euro 96 less than twelve months later. The London riots did not stop the Olympics. England have played friendlies generating millions for FA's who were known to be bent i.e.Trinidad and Tobago. This is the territory. If the worlds major sporting events were only located on moral grounds there would be no venues.
Neither FIFA or UEFA are friends of English football. FIFA appears to be rife with corruption and is in urgent need of finding a mechanism to regulate itself. To be fair Platini has started that process with UEFA. No suprise Russia got the 2018 World Cup - have a look at where many of FIFA's big corporate sponsors come from. As for Qatar - Blatter wanted that World Cup to be in the States - there is a believable conspiracy theory that he allowed the flawed Qatar bid to win, knowing that the summer/winter issue would lead to a re-run. The re-run being 3-4 years after the original vote would give the States a better chance of winning it (as Australia would have beaten them anyway back then).
The States had it 20 years ago and the likes of England should come before them. Whilst the American's are great at organising such events, I still wouldn't want them to get it over more deserving nations, and they're still not a world footballing power
And mine, but at least they have the infrastructure to go with it, like hundreds of airports, thousands of hotels, good stadiums etc. It just bugs me that they aren't and never will be as mad on football as we are but think they have the right to hold it.
I was still living back in Leeds when the venues for 2018 and 2022 were announced, and it was immediately obvious when Qatar was announced for 2022 that oil money had bought the event, nothing more. The speck of desert has no football history, I don't think it even had it's own league, and temps would run at 40C in the summer when the event was to be held. I remember long discussions with friends and colleagues about it. Given how FIFA votes, it was clear to anyone with half a brain that a lot of Qatari money and gifts went to delegates from "the third world" in particular to buy their support. That after winning the vote, there would be rumours of Qatar needing to move the 2022 Cup from summer to winter was pretty obvious too. Their bid was a cheat, as was the process by which they won, and it highlighted how sickeningly corrupt FIFA is. And the crap from Blatter about FIFA wanting 2018 and 2022 going to new markets? That was a sham too, as that was never announced as a criteria when countries were invited to bid. I wanted 2022 to go to Australia. Sure, it was a weak domestic league compared to most, but there are top Australian players playing at the top levels in Europe, and it would have been a new market but one with a decent infrastructure already. Japan, South Korea and USA had all hosted fairly recently, though USA not since 1994. All had decent infrastructure, domestic leagues and, as importantly, some level of support for football already. Qatar? Errr... no stadia, no league, no prior support or football history... As for 2018 and Russia, I'm sure money passed hands for this one too, though it was less of a surprise. It is, at least, a football country, and had never hosted before. England would have been the sentimental choice, but of course we are hated by much of the footballing world, and of course not helped by our own FA who reneged on an agreement with the Germans in the last decade. What else? The USA bidding for a World Cup every 20 years. Nope, they hosted in 1994, so surely England should get a WC before the USA does again? People are correct though, in that the USA has superb infrastructure to host another Cup. It also has a FIFA top 10 ranked team, though thanks largely to overseas based players and being the big fish in the fairly weak CONCACEF region. But domestically, "soccer" here is poor. I don't bother watching much on TV here, but I was in Dallas a couple of years back and saw the local team play LA Galaxy, incl Becks. Piss poor quality - L1/L2 standard, and really, they need to have an official 90 seconds of chanting in about the 23rd minute, complete with words on the jumbotrons? I almost cried into the City shirt I was wearing. With the depth of love for ice hockey, American football, basketball and baseball, the beloved world game of football will never be more than a minority interest, despite it being played extensively up to college age. I've been stunned how many goalposts I see at playing fields here, I expected to see none. But finally, the build up around the world for the World Cup must be huge - I know what it has always been like back home (this is the first WC for 40 years that I haven't lived in England at the time) - here in the US it is negligable. I've had to hunt around online to find TV listings (ESPN will broadcast all matches live here, thankfully), but for news and build up I have to listen to BBC 5Live online or read the BBC website. At the moment here in the US, there are two "World Cups" going on that totally overshadow the piddling little thing you foreigners seem to be getting excited about - the first is the LA Kings v NY Rangers ice hockey Stanley Cup Final series; the second is the Miami Heat vs whoever in the Final series of the NBA. Sorry to (as usual) ramble and digress.
Imagine what would happen if the Excited Sates of America ever won the competition. Perhaps a lot of our posters are unaware that they (USA) have a fetish about everything they do in the sporting world to also be considered as world class. The baseball finals are for the "World Series" and when the NBA champions are confirmed you will hear them saying that they are world champions and the same with the 'Super Bowl" final of the NFL. Thankfully the Stanley Cup of the NHL is never attached to a world saying because Canadian teams take part. Every time I hear someone claiming they are World Champions of a particular American sport I want to ask them if they actually invited other countries to participate - and the answer is always NO! I am surprised that they haven't come up with another version of what the rest of the world calls "football" and then they would claim that the winner of their individual league could be call "club chumpions of the world". Spelling error was made to show my distaste for their own opinions of themselves.
Don't apologise. We all need a good rant now and again. I might have one soon on the political thread currently running and give all the fascists / UKIP devotees a right ear bashing!
It has always been a con in terms of who gets the World Cup, back in the day when it rotated between Europe & South America as the hosts, how times have Brazil, Argentina & Mexico each hosted the tournament, and yet have the likes of Peru, Bolivia, Venezula and Paraguay ever seen the World Cup in their part of S America, NO! I think both the Russia and Qatar bids were bribes, but it will never be proven. With Platini involved in the top corridor of football power we will never see the World Cup in England. If FIFA were true in spreading the World Game then giving it to Russia is plausible as at least they have a relatively strong Domestic league that through oil money has attracted top players there of recent years, however the 2022 should have gone to Australia to try and boost 'Soccer' down under, due to it's relatively minor sport status, in the same way it did by giving it to the USA in 1994. I firmly believe the World Cup should not go to any country that has not previously qualified for the World Cup, or have a recognisable football league system in that country.
Don't tell them that England are the bastion of good grace and its slanty eyed Johnny Foreigner that is the wrong sort. ITS JUST BUSINESS ...
