Monday, October 29, 2007

World Cup rotation dead - Fifa spits on Concacaf - Why is Jack Warner still in charge?

Fifa made it official today, the rotational system will die after the 2014 Brazil finals, meaning everyone except for little Oceania and Concacaf got a piece of the World Cup pie.

This comes as no surprise as Fifa boss Sepp Blatter has been hinting at this for some time now but still, one has to wonder why Concacaf President and Blatter's BFF Jack Warner was not able to bring his confederation the finals as he promised. Since it was Concacaf's to lose and Warner lost it, hopefully all the FAs will realize that Warner is not the great strength he portrays himself to be.

So 2018 now becomes an open bidding tournament much like, as Blatter points out, the Olympics. I guess that means 2018 process will be a lot like those for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Blatter listed China, Australia, Mexico, the United States, England and one combined offer from the Netherlands and Belgium as countries already showing interest in the finals. However, seeing that those in Europe pushed this moved, it is pretty safe to say that most of them are already unofficially out. I'm sure Fifa will keep as many countries 'in the game' as they can so as to milk as much out of it as possible, but in the end, 2018 is now England's World Cup to lose.

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2 Comments:

Blogger CACuzcatlan said...

Not to mention that Mexico has hosted twice and the U.S. once since the last time England hosted it. Although CONCACAF as a whole (i.e. Canada) got screwed on the rotation, you can't say it would be even close to fair to give the U.S. or Mexico another cup before giving one to England.

10:27 PM  
Blogger Mike H said...

Cacuzcatlan,

Yes, I do think it would be fair to give the US or Mexico another final because FIFA had said they were going to rotate the finals through out all the confederations.

Europe had their rotation in 2006, which England bid for and lost. In fact, England has bid on a large number of World Cups since 1966 and lost all of them. So the whole fair argument has nothing to do with Concacaf, but why Fifa didn't give any of the five World Cups held in Europe since 1966 (including 2 in Germany) to England.

Don't get me wrong, I think England deserves a World Cup, but 2018 should have been used to finish the rotational process (I am excluding Oceania because they don't have a country big enough to host). The fact that Fifa instead decided to change their rules is, to me, unfair.

10:05 AM  

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