Qatar 2022 - the Football

Infantino and the Qatari Emir not leaving Messi alone was pretty cringey. Same with Macron with Mbappe. Presumably the 48 team World Cup will be 12 groups of 4, 16 groups of 3 would create problems with the final match being played and a draw suiting both teams. Happy for Messi, presumably Mac Allister won’t be at the valley on Wednesday night, what a come down that would be

 

12 groups of 4 teams is going to be a tough group stage.
From what I understand only each group winner will go through automatically to the round of 16, plus the 'best four' group runners-up.

In my view that makes getting out of the group a tougher task than getting through the round of 16, and maybe even the QFs.
One slip up in a group game and some International heavyweight teams could be going home very early.
Not necessarily saying that's a bad thing. But I think it will make the group games pretty tense (maybe a lot of teams playing for draws).

It's pretty poor form that Europe only gets 3 extra places from the additional 16 (48 replacing 32).
FIFA are very anti-Europe, which is risibly ironic.
When will we get a FIFA President from Africa or East Asia? Instead of chinless European aristocracy on a bribe-taking guilt trip.

 

The pics of fans celebrating in Buenos Aires brought back a few memories of their victory in1978 when I was part of Ally's Army. They were out on the streets then until 2 am, then suddenly the streets cleared. I never saw a single Argentinian fan pi55ed. Lovely people. According to today's reports the streets didn't clear today as they did then, but in 1978 they were under a fascist dictatorship.

 

As a general rule repressive dictatorships don't go hand in hand with football success (at least since the 1930's)
China - DNQ
Russia - banned
North Korea - DNQ
Qatar - group stage
Saudi Arabia - group stage

I'm not sure about Senegal & Morocco, but it might be that all 16 of the knock-out stage teams were from democratic countries in 2022.
Even Spain did nothing under Franco.
Italy under Mussolini is the only exception, and that was pre-WW2.
So if you want World Cup success, fight for your right to vote!!