Fifa presidential candidate Gianni Infantino says he would press for the World Cup to be held in a whole region rather than one or two countries. http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/35351190 Interesting idea. Could save a fortune on wasted bids and bring the game to more countries, more often (possibly). What do you think?
Sounds like a good idea, especially now Blatter can't muddy the waters, even though he is still being paid his FIFA salary!
Sounds convoluted to me, there would two Bidding processes which countries in the region bidding the host games and the regions bidding, unless that rotates. Frankly I think it's a poor idea. Basically the vast amount of football following is in Europe and South America granted Asian and African interest is growing. Personally think is a waste having a random World Cup game in some obscure place in a region. The idea of having a host nation for these event is one of the best things about them, the atmosphere in that country is great and wouldn't be matched. I think euro 2020 will be a bit of a flop. It will also have less of a legacy and is more likely to be building white elephant stadiums in poor countries without the money invested in any increased involvement. Obviously the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy and the US could basically host a pretty good World Cup tomorrow without large financial investment. I would propose that they should alternate between a "cheap" one and and outreach development one useing the money saved in the developed countries to benefit the developing ones. This way the fans who spend all the money and all the advertising is aimed at, basically Europe, gets to see the World Cup more frequently in their own time zone if not countries and people in developing countries get to enjoy a world cup that doesn't bankrupt them.
I prefer it as it is, being hosted in just one country. I quite like the festival atmosphere that it creates - you wouldn't get the same effect if spread across several countries.
I quite enjoyed the 2002 world cup in Korea/Japan, but then it did give me an opportunity to be in the pub at 6.30 in the morning, so that may have affected my opinion.
Not a brilliant idea in my opinion. I prefer a single host country rather than diluting the budgets and atmosphere across several countries. Imagine some of the travel expenses following your team across a region. It's bad enough getting across an individual country for games as it stands. If a group of countries wants to put an organised joint bid together to split costs etc then no drama but it should be the exception.
I suspect at least of the rational thinking behind this proposal is to reduce the chances of cash for votes so while it perhaps is not the best solution (certainly not for the fans), I can see why this has been thrown in to the ring. There is clearly a lot riding on winning the hosting of the WC Finals, hence what has happened in FIFA for perhaps decades, and that is obviously something the next President is going to avoid like the plague.
