Could the USA bid for the 2026 World Cup? (Guardian article)

[The Cowboy]

Erm, mate. We've only ever had it once. 1994 was it.



If you were to apply your same logic that you do to North America to the other continents, there are realistically only 3 or 4 countries in South America that could host it... 3 or 4 in Africa... You could probably come up with a list of 7 or 8 in Asia, but many of the countries on that list wouldn't even be interested... Europe is the only continent with a glut of interested potential hosts, but that number is still only realistically like 7 or 8.

Hmm, I wasn't talking about suitable hosts. North America is basically Canada, US, Mexico. Would Concacaf be included in any WC bidding alongside these three? That would obviously increase the number, although the Caribbean would almost certainly create a joint bid.

In terms of WC bidding, the entire North, Central and South America should be considered as one entity.

 

[Garrick]

Hmm, I wasn't talking about suitable hosts. North America is basically Canada, US, Mexico. Would Concacaf be included in any WC bidding alongside these three? That would obviously increase the number, although the Caribbean would almost certainly create a joint bid.

In terms of WC bidding, the entire North, Central and South America should be considered as one entity.

North America is CONCACAF. But I don't think there's a single venue in all of Central America and the Caribbean that is already large enough for a World Cup group stage match, let alone the final. Even Costa Rica's national stadium only holds like 35,000.

Not only in terms of WC bidding, in general all of the Americas should be one entity. It'd be 51 nations, still smaller than both UEFA and CAF, and it'd actually be competitive.

 

[obc]

the problem is even if all of the western hemisphere is one zone the US is still the best host for it in terms of existing infrastructure.

Brazil is a huge football power, but the amount of money pissed away was absurd. Was there last month. Once out of richie rich Ipanema or Copacabana, there was a lot of street art venting anger at spending billions on (now unused) stadiums rather than the poor. And whether flavellas there or some barrios here, SA poor make US poor look upper middle class.

Argentina might have some grand stadiums in BA, but those are old and it is worse off economically than Brazil now. Argentinians used to come to PY to get stuff on the cheap. Now Paraguayos shop across the river in Argieland.

If you want to rip on the US for lack of football history/culture, not sure how you can cite Canada. They made it to one. '86. (I do think a joint one might be great, if they could get some facilities up.)

As for US football culture, the article was wrong. NHL was overstated. Only reason Hockey is back in some degree of public consciousness is because traditional powers in large hockey cities Chicago, Boston ('11), and New York have had some great seasons.

Check out the massive new contract NBC took out for the Prem. Check out the ratings they are getting here... and those are stunted by the people who get up to watch matches at bars. Every Saturday bars open at 7am in the west coast and fans saunter in eating breakfast burritos and drinking beer watching matches. The sport grows and continues to grow.

I agree that England is long overdue and Australia would also be ace... but 2026 is right out for Australia seeing as the 2022 Cup, at present, is being hosted by their confederation. Even if the continental rotation was dropped, they still won't let one Federation host back to back, which is sound.

 

[Garrick]

the problem is even if all of the western hemisphere is one zone the US is still the best host for it in terms of existing infrastructure.

Brazil is a huge football power, but the amount of money pissed away was absurd. Was there last month. Once out of richie rich Ipanema or Copacabana, there was a lot of street art venting anger at spending billions on (now unused) stadiums rather than the poor. And whether flavellas there or some barrios here, SA poor make US poor look upper middle class.

Argentina might have some grand stadiums in BA, but those are old and it is worse off economically than Brazil now. Argentinians used to come to PY to get stuff on the cheap. Now Paraguayos shop across the river in Argieland.

If you want to rip on the US for lack of football history/culture, not sure how you can cite Canada. They made it to one. '86. (I do think a joint one might be great, if they could get some facilities up.)

As for US football culture, the article was wrong. NHL was overstated. Only reason Hockey is back in some degree of public consciousness is because traditional powers in large hockey cities Chicago, Boston ('11), and New York have had some great seasons.

Check out the massive new contract NBC took out for the Prem. Check out the ratings they are getting here... and those are stunted by the people who get up to watch matches at bars. Every Saturday bars open at 7am in the west coast and fans saunter in eating breakfast burritos and drinking beer watching matches. The sport grows and continues to grow.

I agree that England is long overdue and Australia would also be ace... but 2026 is right out for Australia seeing as the 2022 Cup, at present, is being hosted by their confederation. Even if the continental rotation was dropped, they still won't let one Federation host back to back, which is sound.

One thing that would help a lot in other countries hosting it is cutting down on the venue requirements. Why do FIFA insist on having 12 venues for the tournament, especially when a bunch of them only get used for a couple of group stage games?

If the legacy of 2014 in Brazil was only 8 venues all eight of them would still be in good, regular use today, and it'd also be much more reasonable for different countries to host outside of the Big 5 + USA.

 

[obc]

One thing that would help is if FIFA invested some of their own cash into host countries that need to develop adequate venues.

Nonsensical to me that FIFA rake in BILLIONS off Brazil, while Brazil invest billions.

But that will happen right after vote transparency.


And the venue total is pretty nuts, looking around SA. Pretty sure any/every country here would have to do a Brazil and invest a truckload on new stadiums in places where they will be horribly underutilized forever after. A permanent edifice illustrating FIFA corruption.

Then again, not spreading it around might lead to overload of any given city.

 

[USABlue]

1 was an emergency step in like.


I think there should be a return to hosting it in places where stadia already exist or require minimal upgrades, certainly not where they have to be built on the scale of how they were in Brazil where they arent required after the comp... and deffo not like Qatar.
USA held 1 'too recent' imo, but the likes of there, here, Germany could already provide enough stadiums and also enough for a minor nations comp at the same time for the likes of Canada, Scotland etc.

agree about the whole build 10 stadiums and leave them empty nonsense. terrible for those nations

 

[StatesideBlue3]

A Caribbean World Cup could be amazing. One stadium per island.

Am I alone in thinking doing it continent-by-continent is a little unfair when N America has effectively 3 countries whilst Africa has 54, Europe 47, and Asia 44?

While the Caribbean idea is cool, it would not work with qualifying. You can't have 6 or 7 Caribbean countries in the World Cup

 

[WA Toffee]

Australia are the very obvious choice really. Stacks of existing stadia in great cities, they could probably host it tomorrow. And if the purist demand it remains in Jun-Jul, then the weather is still decent enough down there at that point anyway.

The only problem with Australia is that all the big stadia are aussie rules football grounds, which are essentially cricket pitches. It would require a lot of work to make them ideal for football

 

[Garrick]

While the Caribbean idea is cool, it would not work with qualifying. You can't have 6 or 7 Caribbean countries in the World Cup

Well, I mean, they recently just proved they have no issue knocking off the normal World Cup qualifiers from North America...

I'm going to go cry in a corner now.