The World Cup is arguably the most sought after competition for football fans of any country.

It has been 53 years since England last had the honor of lifting the Jules Rimet trophy aloft with the next opportunity hopefully to be in 2022 which will be held In Qatar.

Qatar World Cup

The 2022 FIFA World Cup is to take place in Qatar a controversial selection due to its strict laws on alcohol, public displays of affection, same-sex relations and overall human rights. In addition to this, the tournament will be the last to involve 32 teams, with an increase to 48 teams scheduled for the 2026 tournament (Canada/USA/Mexico).

The extremely poor working conditions in which the stadiums have been constructed have led to reports citing over 1200 deaths as a direct result of building works for a competition that generates around £20+ billion to a country’s economy. The figure is shameful and these deaths simply should not be happening.

Fixture alterations have already had to have been made around the world due to the traditional summer months not being suitable to host the tournament, with temperatures reaching up to 40 degrees (nooooo thankyou!) taking this into consideration, should countries like Qatar even have be considered in the first place? Hopefully, decisions like this by dear old Sepp Blatter are now a thing of the past!

Increasing the game to a wider audience is a great thing to be doing, as long as that country has shown serious effort to already integrate the game into the country as well as having a base level of stadiums, accommodation and transport links to withstand the tirade of visitors once the tournament begins. All of which Qatar did not have in place at the time of the bid, and still to a large extent do not.

Expanding the competition but reducing the quality?

The main worry I have with increasing the number of teams that the competition consists of is that it could well “water down” the competition to an extent that some national teams qualify are simply not at a level to even realistically compete. The World cup should be a show of the Worlds best teams and not used as a guise for expanding the game to smaller nations when the reality is to simply line FIFA members pockets.

Another worry is that the competition becomes a farce in that nearly everyone in a group could qualify for the knockout stages. This could lead to an extremely boring and pointless set of group fixtures. The format would be 16 groups of 3 teams, therefore the team that did not play in the first game could be at a disadvantage to the other two as if the team they are playing won their opening game they will already know they only need a point to progress.

This would also add extra games into a relatively short space of time, this could well reduce the quality of some games due to issues of fatigue and even heighten the risk of injuries, especially against the lesser skilled teams that shouldn’t be there anyway!!!!

Nations League

The competition nobody cared about, a group of glorified friendlies, a waste of everyone’s time. Oh wait, England are doing well..maybe this competition wasn’t such a waste of time after all!

It is tricky to know for sure how this competition will fit into the mindset of both players and fans in the future. Will it be regarded in the same light as winning the Euros? Or will it carry the same disregard as the
Johnstone’s Paint Trophy used to carry amongst fans. One thing is for certain I would love to see England in the Final of a competition no matter what that competition is!

UK Bid for 2030?

After missing out on hosting the 2018 World Cup to Russia (we was robbed) the news recently has been around a renewed UK-wide bid for the 2030 World cup. Footballs biggest game has only ever been staged here once back in 1966 and has never set foot back here since. (I wonder why…) With FIFA’s clear obsession it seems with joint bids from multiple countries the only way to secure the competition’s return to England is to get our neighboring countries to bid alongside us. With this in mind, the football associations of England and Wales recently released statements confirming that the five national governing bodies are “in discussions about the feasibility of bidding to be the European candidate” to host the event.

Surely with a 100% record, every time we have hosted the event, should we get the green light to host the world cup in 2030 it means only one thing…

ITS COMING HOME!