Thursday, December 25, 2008

World Cup 2006 Blog

World Cup 2006 Blog

Link to World Cup Soccer - South Africa 2010

World Cup 2018 & 2022 Bidding About to Begin

Posted: 24 Dec 2008 07:40 AM PST

The bidding war to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups is almost underway, with the official procedure beginning in January 2009.

Big news is that FIFA will be announcing the hosts for both World Cups in December 2010, so we’ll know the 2022 World Cup hosts a full 12 years in advance. It’s a little bit complicated, but basically if a country’s (or countries’) bid for 2018 fails, then they can still also bid for 2022. Provided they’re on a different continent to the 2018 winners. That clear?


The serious interest so far has come from:

Australia
Benelux (Belgium & Netherlands & Luxembourg)
China
England
Mexico
Sportugal (Spain & Portugal)
Qatar
Russia
USA

Without getting too political, I’m not sure China has much chance when you add together their really not very good football team and some questionable activities surrounding the 2008 Olympics. Mexico has already hosted two World Cups and three would be just getting greedy, while Belgium and Netherlands had the Euros as recently as 2000, Portugal as recently as 2004.

USA hosted in ‘94, which is still relatively recent. Also, would that mean all the 15,000 to 20,000 soccer specific stadiums getting overlook in favour of NFL stadiums to host games?

Russia’s interesting given the amount of money in the Russian Premier League, and Qatar would be an experience.

My guess would be England in 2018 and Australia in 2022. Mostly because England will just keep asking until they finally get it and Australia is then the most likely of the non-Euro bidders because of its solid sports infrastructure.

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