I am up to here with MP's and their expenses,and sick to death of bent football executives. The sight of Abramovic yesterday annoyed the hell out of me. I'm fed up with immigrants, and it's time to renew the Dunkirk spirit. Stuff Blatter and is cronies, lets start again by forming a World Association with like minded Countries, we can take turns to host it, and please God manage it properly. Lets cut the rope and let that bunch of FIFA fools float away.
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Where's Martin Luther when you need him.
That has what to do with this because ?
Football will never be a sport that helps the "poor" in Qatar.
South Korea and Japan shouldn't have it after only recently hosting the tournament together, the US will never fully embrace the sport so what's the point in going there to promote the game. Australia again, to a lesser extent, the same as the US and I'm sure our Aussie based Lifers will correct me but isn't there serious financial problems for A league sides because of the low support for football?
Football is huge in the Middle East and as I said earlier the tournament will be seen as the Middle East's tournament, so on those grounds it really doesn't bother me as others who are totally against it.
The point is that South Africa is a large country with significant interest and history in football. Qatar isn't. Twice before SA had qualified for the WC Finals. They have a population of 50 million, of whom 1.5 million are registered as football players with the South African FA (this ranks them 7th in the World in terms of interest) many more play football informally and are not therefore registered. Co-incidently Qatar also have 1.5 million people, the difference being that is their total population, not the number of players. They have just 6,500 registered players. To put this into context, The Kent FA claims and 45,000 players and 3,384 teams.
That article makes a lot of predictions about the state of football in 12 years' time.
I doubt many people thought in 1998 that Spain would win this year's World Cup, with Holland, Germany and Uruguay (!) as the other semi-finalists. Wasn't everyone talking back then about the future dominance of French football?
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WC winners in 98, runners up in 2006 and EC winners in 2000, that's not a bad era and commendable when you bear in mind that they didn't qualify for the 94 WC and very few of their players in this era were based in France.
A great decade for them no doubt, but no one would've predicted in 1998 that France would finish bottom of their WC2010 group behind Mexico, Uruguay and South Africa, after finishing behind Serbia in the qualifiers and 'cheating' Ireland out of a spot in the World Cup.
Put it another way, if someone in 1998 said that Uruguay were going to have a good World Cup in 2010 and Spain were going to win it, they would've been laughed at just like that article does to Qatar's hopes of competing at a level with the other teams in 2022.
England have had the world cup once and so will a country with 1 year old history in international football
Slovenia: population 2m
Qatar: population 1.7m
Northern Ireland had a good team in the 80s.
Bahrain (population 800k) narrowly missed out on qualification after losing their playoff against New Zealand.
Who said Qatar were going to win the World Cup? No one. But could they be deserving of a spot among the elite 32 footballing countries of the world? It's possible.
I don't think the important point is predicting who are likely to be winners, but who is likely to be capable of qualifying for the competition. For all of the teams you have mentioned there only a fool would say that none of them would be capable of qualifying in four years' time (let alone 12 years), because all of them (France, Uraguay, Mexico, South Africa, Serbia and Ireland) have proved their capability by doing it before. There is nothing at all to suggest that Qatar could ever do so - unless of course they pay established international quality players to take on Qatari citizenship. I wouldn't put that past them.
Yes it does matter. It matters a lot. Firstly because of the natural injustice of having a bunch of people with no history of football buying their way to hosting a tournament for their own political ends, when others who have shown a long standing love of the game cannot get a sniff. Secondly because the World Cup has not had enough quality of late as it is. Allowing a team to enter, who just would not be able to qualify by right is the last thing the competition needs.
In essence, World Cup has been flogged to a rich bloke, who will hold it in his back garden, which is a desert.
Spain were the constant underachievers until three years ago. Never thought capable of actually winning a big match. Uruguay were nobodies, not even highly thought of earlier this year, and not much bigger than Qatar.
Who were Northern Ireland when they reached the last 12 in 1982? Would someone have predicted that in 1970?
Sure, we can say with a fair degree of likelihood that Spain should qualify for the 2022 World Cup, and we can probably rule Qatar out of winning it, but can we say for certain that any country won't qualify? When it comes to a country with a lot of money and a lot of desire, who have 12 years to put everything in place, I think it's far too early to say.
But I repeat: if someone said with certainty in 1998 that Spain would win the 2010 World Cup and that Uruguay would be in the semi-finals (ie last 4, like Qatar would be last 32), they would've been laughed out the door. How about North Korea in the World Cup, or New Zealand drawing with Italy, or South Africa and Slovakia beating France and Italy respectively? The article makes a lot of very strong predictions about where football will be in 2022.
Yep. Makes you sick, doesn't it?
Sure Spain had historically failed to live up to their billing before this year, but they'd qualified 13 times and been quarter finalists on four occasions. "Uruguay were nobodies, not even highly thought of earlier this year, and not much bigger than Qatar..." What an insult you give to a country that has qualified 10 times and won it once. They are as passionate about their football as anyone. It's hard to think of a country that has achieved so much given the size of their population.
Northern Ireland - ha ha, I'll treat that argument with utter contempt until the day that Blatter opens a little envelope saying that the WC Final will be held at Windsor Park. Of course every now and then a team qualifies that people wouldn't have guessed would. All credit to them. It's great for football when it happens, but it is utterly ridiculous to start second guessing which country might do it next based on nothing else but their bank balance.
I just think that it's far too early to say how they'll get on in 12 years' time.
You can laugh at Northern Ireland, but it's around the same size as Qatar, and they've done it. So have Slovenia. And Bahrain were very very close last year. So it's possible that they might do OK. It's not inevitable that they will, nor that they won't.
Nice work bringing up football played over 60 years ago re: Uruguay. They've won it twice, by the way, but earlier this year no one was predicting them to make any big impact in the World Cup.
I thought that South Africa World Cup was underwhelming and I ain't just talking about our performance. Nobody wants to play for Fabio it seems.
The only striking thing about Thursday was how predictable it all was. Our leaders selling themselves for nothing. Handbags and gladrags, I tell you, handbags and gladrags.
Still we all support a great footingball team; good times are just around the corner for us!