Britinus wrote: ↑15 Mar 2018, 18:23
Unthinkable but is it at all possible that we might boycott the world cup. FA have said they will follow whatever the Govt. recommend and will any other countries follow suit. US would but unfortunately they are not in it. Let's hope it blows over by end of May.
The month, or Theresa?
A unilateral boycott by the England team would achieve nothing, I think the Government has acknowledged that, but they have said royal and political guests will not attend.
It would need to be a NATO-wide boycott to have any material impact, and would be surprised if the rest of Europe backed the idea at the moment.
Sounds like they are getting wise to / sticking it to FIFA but if you read between the lines it just means they are down to 'only' 20 cities that want to be host cities in the joint US/Canada/Mexico bid (there were 23 and it will be eventually reduced to 16). Not worth getting the bunting out yet....
Money grabbing ****ers. 32 teams is already too many (but does make for a straightforward contest, mathematically) and 48 just adds more bloat and complications. Just think how much the Figurini Panini album will cost by 2026.....
I was indoctrinated in to International football, when Yugoslavia existed. It all seemed a little easier in those days. We did have the problem of two Germanys though and Ireland of course. Norway, Iceland, Cyprus and Malta, were the minnows. How things change.
I really like the South American set up. It is by far the best qualifying system. Hard, testing and gives the qualifying places to the best teams. I know, sod the qualifying, give them all a place.
It's just going to water down the quality and let in more defensively minded nonentity teams, while lending itself to shit formats. I think the proposal was for groups of 3 (to knock out just a third of the teams) and then knockout from last 32. Makes it a bit of a lottery, unless you're the unlucky team who doesn't play last in your group and allows a 1982-style collusion!
"But Italy... but Holland... but the USA..." the FIFA bigwigs will say. They're not in Russia because they don't deserve to be, you qualify on merit. If you have to give the "big" teams more of a free pass, then have a wider repechage system to rescue those who had a bad day or just got a bustard of a group. Or even some sort of promotion-relegation system. But 32 teams is easily enough.
My favourite competition always used to be the Euros when it was only 16 teams and every match really meant something and usually between teams of some standing.
The qualifying wasn't a series of glorified friendlies, it was actually very difficult to get through rather than more difficult to lose out as is so often the case now.
The last Euros with 32 teams ended up with Portugal winning after qualifying winless from their group in third place and getting through via a complicated comparison with other groups.
It was for the most part a long and unwieldy competition, lacking in excitement and quality, and although there were some nice stories like Iceland there were too many meaningless group games and the knockout phases didn't produce many notable matches. The whole finals just seemed to be very forgettable and went on far too long.
As for the World Cup, it is already too large imo and qualifying is ridiculously easy for the most part. I know Italy, the Netherlands and the USA have still managed to miss out even so, but that's probably more an indictment of the levels to which they had fallen more than anything else.
48 teams just makes an already bad format even worse and I suspect is as much an exercise in Infantino consolidating his own position as anything else.
Increasing the number of teams in finals competitions, both at World and European levels, did Blatter and Platini no harm at all and naturally increased their power base as grateful delegates with their own spheres of influence could then be relied upon too.
It would be remiss and careless in my opinion if Gianni Infantino or indeed any other astute president didn't make such a move.
Some of FIFA's (or UEFA's) head men have now gone, but the culture within those organisations hasn't suddenly changed overnight. The same rules still apply and widening the scope and length of finals competitions has always been a wise and astute move on so many levels.
