The problem with that is that it then it is no longer a sport, rather a... business.
UEFA letter is spot on.
Now if only that could put a dent in Infantino reelection...
To be a bit cynical on this, I'm going to say that UEFA is worried the international scene will infringe on the European league scene.
They've found something to be outraged about, but the reality is more about the threat to their own bottom line than it is about the international game.
There have been other attempts at a league superior to the individual national leagues -- like a permanent champions league. Establishment of anything more regular at the international level would be one more way this could be accomplished.
Each European league (and leagues from other confederations) has a vested interest in keeping the World Cup not just "free" but rare as well.
The time to be on the high horse against FIFA isn't 2026, it was against he labor conditions in Qatar, or the corruption to award the 2018 and 2022 hosts, or any number of other things.
However correct they are, they only complain when it's against their own self interest.
Do you know who Platini is?
This is only because Europe cares about soccer. If this was basketball, ice hockey or baseball then I don't think Europe would care and would be the country to bribe
I think any large multi-national organisation that deals with handing out events that generate vast sums of money inevitably succumbs to the rot.
See also: the IOC.
Take away the money and FIFA doesn’t have much to bargain with. They need to remember they are a purely administrative organization.
The game is already as global as it gets, 1.5bn people watched the wc final…
There is a tiny bit of room for expansion. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c5y03dermmeo:
“Football is almost non-existent on this Pacific island. Nauru has never fielded a team in an official international match and it has just one – hard sand – pitch.
While there is interest in big Premier League matches, and children wear Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo kits, any attempts to actually play football tend to be mocked, unless it's Aussie rules.”
(Nauru is about 21 km², 21,000 people)
It makes no sense to me that people favored the (much) worse product because “tradition”.
Competition gets boring real fast when it is always the same handful of teams. When there are no real consequences to losing, winning becomes meaningless.
Bayern v Chelsea matches stop being as interesting when every game is a Bayern v Chelsea match and most of them have no real impact either way. On the other hand, football becomes most interesting when it's a Bayern v Bremen and Bremen wins. People love an underdog after all, and nothing is more exciting than seeing an elite team take the game for granted and being punished for it.
The Super League is only a more interesting product from the "big name play ball" perspective. It is great when you want to make a fortune in tv rights and licensing, but it sucks for everyone who cares about football as a sport.
Even there it’s still not really true that the best team can lose to the worst team in any given night. The best team is generally favored a lot and justifiably so. In soccer teams can also be quite mismatched and a lucky goal by the worse team can be the only score and win the match.
I'm more of a hockey guy, which has a much stricter salary cap than the NFL, and the Edmonton Oilers are instructive here: they had a bunch of first overall picks 10 years ago (including multiple franchise players), but the team itself wasn't competitive until management changed and could build a cohesive team.
In the NFL, winning is more about quality management and coaching (and some luck) than anything else. Which is a good thing. Leagues where winners are decided mostly on who is able to spend the most on players are lopsided and kind of lame.
Football is very tribal. People want to dream that their local club have a shot to participate and maybe win the Champions league. Think of Leicester and Girona. In the Netherlands there is now a club called NEC and they have a shot to qualify for it, and that by itself is a historic moment for the club.
Imagine never having any relegation risk for being crap. Without divisions and removal of risk, what's the point?
Without the chance to work at a lower level and through simply being good, getting a team promoted how are you supposed to inspire? NFL, is both the least and the most American sport there is.
That’s exciting? There’s 50+ teams in those leagues that stand NO shot of ever winning a championship, ever. The argument I’ve seen in this thread is either 1) it’s thrilling when my favorite average team upsets the backups of one of the powerhouses and 2) it’s exciting to get relegated and then come back.
You know what’s even more exciting…winning a championship. And every August every NFL fan starts with the hope and belief that this is their year. NFL has Leicester-lite situations every few years. Patriots were worst 2 years ago, lose in the championship the next year.
I will give credit to the Premier League - they’re doing it right. As mentioned, too 15-20 teams are competitive and could win a title in a given year. You know why it’s the best league - they set up a revenue sharing model similar to US leagues. Equal chance of winning = most excitement for fans of the entire league.
I know this has been an NFL slogan for decades but i actually feel like it's less true in the NFL than in a lot of other sports--soccer included.
I also think US leagues could really benefit from the idea of relegation
It might just be an entertainment spectacle to you but for others it's very tied into local identity.
The idea that outside money men should be allowed to come in and destroy open competition is highly offensive to me.
The best years in football are when a smaller club gets a run of luck and beats the big boys. Or when one of the super clubs gets relegated and their fans have experience a season or two in the lower leagues.
You're not taking that away from us without a fight!
By comparison UEFA sounds a lot stronger.
Yes I hear about that a lot. Yuk
But I also hear that FIFA puts a lot of resources into developing the game in African countries.
I am asking: Is that true in your experience?
So it used to be that there were pre-tournament games, to qualify.
A lot of countries... they wouldn't qualify. They'd play an ample amount of pre-tournament games though.
Now, you seen more countries qualify, and you see countries who used to not qualify, dropping ASAP (in the deathmatch 16th matches, right after poule).
So what did we get out of that? A few matches during the tournament, and they were quite frankly meaningless.
These countries which made it to deathmatch 1/16th gained nothing. It is a scam, a trick. They think they gained fame, but they really have not, since the barrier to get to the deathmatch has been lowered.
Furthermore, if you follow a corrupt scheme, you can ensure a country like Argentina is going to have the least chance to end up with strong opponents.
No, mr. Infantino. We need less corruption in FIFA, not more.
* We don't want a drink break to watch commercials..
* ..or a 30 min break with a bunch of actors (who sing with autotune) when your own rules say it may only be a 15 min break.
* We don't want red cards commutated or revoked.
* We don't want star players not getting yellow or red card, when other players are getting one for the same foul.
* We don't want a yellow card being reversed, then given to an opponent, based on 'identity mismatch'.
* We don't want to see racism or political statements.
* We don't want to see rugby, we want to see football.
* We want to see fair-play, with a meaningful VAR which can be called by the captain or coach of each team twice (getting back their call if agreed on).
You don't need a for-profit in your chain to fix the above. You need a non-profit with a non-corrupt chair, and you've proven you're not fit. Red card for you, mr. Infantino. You're out, arrivederci.
I am not sure what your problem with Argentina is, but with a meaningful VAR, Cucurella would have been sent off and Enzo Fernandez would have stayed on the pitch. I am sick of the anti-Argentina racist campaign. Just follow the amount of yellow and red cards they were given in their last three games in the WC.
Cucurella did not violate the rule. He touched his mouth for an instant. The rule is not “if you ever touch your mouth you get ejected”, which is why VAR didn’t do anything and neither did the ref on the field.
I generally have nothing against Argentina but they were wildly outplayed in the last game, they were disrespectful, and Messi’s appeal to the ref to try to get Cucurella ejected was shameful.
Crybabies. Ban Argentina from FIFA for years after that debacle.
> So what did we get out of that? A few matches during the tournament, and they were quite frankly meaningless.
The answer for FIFA is of course money. More countries, more games, more money.
But the non-cynical answer is that all of those countries got to see their teams play 3 World Cup games. Some got to see more than that. I would bet that many of those countries’ citizens are very happy with the expanded tournament, and good for them. We also got Cape Verde this year, who many people around the world were excited for.
Madonna and Shakira were actually doing playback. BTS and Timberlake at least were singing live.
We should still be frustrated by it, but I think I get what they were getting at.
This is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. The system is working as intended.
Luckily capitalism is not the only system available to us, and we can find a system which is not inherently corrupt.
the silk road was riding high long before crypto ads were running during superbowls
Some island in the Caribbean has equal say compared to Spain for example.
That's why it's so easy. Bribe the people in the countries where the people don't care about soccer.
The US is a vast market. It's played a lot in the US as well. The MLS also not a tiny league. Football is also huge in Mexico.
Hugo Sanchez was truly a legend. Among many.
Ah. This boondoggle makes sense now.
> You're excluding about half of the planet by only mentioning Africa.
It's the half of the planet that nobody cares about when it comes to football.
Meanwhile UEFA can just get together with South America and form a new governing body for a new world cup
Wouldn't be surprised to see Africa surpass South America in the next decade
That's 75% of the final four and of the quarterfinals, 44% of the round of 16. Then if you add CONCACAF into the mix, it comes to 63% of the RO16.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ce345l6kg6ro - "Uefa - the body that governs European football - has 55 votes. Concacaf, which oversees football in North, Central America and the Caribbean, has 35 and Asia has 46." which only leaves 75 votes from the 211 and he'd need 106.
[1] I've no idea why the BBC doesn't properly capitalise UEFA or CONCACAF. I assume it's either some weird style guide or the subeditors are having another day off.
"Where you would normally pronounce the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Maga, Sars, Aids, Nasa, Opec, Apec)."
(Under "acronym": https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/a )
The African confederation is actually marginally smaller than the European one. It also has no shortage of internal disagreements, brings in very little revenue, and the bigger nations are ultimately going to look at where the money is and see that it isn't trying to plough ahead without Europe, Asia or the United States.
CONCACAF was actually one of Infantino's best hopes, a mixture of the US, a few nations that hugely benefited from Infantino's other world cup reforms and a few that have no realistic prospect of World Cup football but would love $40m in return for voting a particular way...
I am Asian. Our country FA is corrupt as hell too. The way I read this, FIFA needs a yes from roughly half of the member nations to go forward with this. Yes to a offer (not promise) to receive $20m. I can totaly see the top brass of our FA, 10-20 people at most, looking at this as an opportunity to earn easy several million bucks and voting yes.
Regardless of rhetoric about "not to be sold", the bigger issue is that this looks like a very bad financial arrangement for a sport that is awash with funds already so doesn't need to sell its future revenues off cheaply or learn how to make money from PE, but probably a good deal for Infantino and chums. Corruption at FIFA is nothing new, but a behind-closed-doors sweetheart deal for a large fraction of their future revenue was really pushing at boundaries ...
And Infantino had become so convinced of his own genius he thought that giving member states a fait accompli, a ticking clock and an indication that most of the money would go to states that voted yes (and a financial deal that would be an attractive bung to the 100 or so FIFA members with no chance of actually qualifying, but shrinks the future revenue stream for everyone else) would actually fly.
Plus UEFA already makes more money than FIFA, could happily organize a rival competition attracting more top teams from the rest of the world and sponsorship money if it came to that, and had a unique opportunity to flex where fans and clubs would be universally behind them...
So this will now be the new norm. Host countries will be ones where laws don’t prohibit gouging fans. They’ll come up with creative solutions to meet the rotation requirement like the upcoming host a couple games in South America farce that’s allowing them to go to Saudi Arabia after that. They’ll continue to push the boundaries of decency until they get sufficient pushback.
It’s sad though. The World Cup, while imperfect, remains an event that brings the world together. We don’t have many of those left.
But there's always a breaking point... hopefully.
Therefore, someone has to be left out. That can be decided multiple ways, but there is no philosophical reason that money being the deciding factor is wrong. We use that mechanism for almost everything else in the world. It's the worst system...except for all the others.
If the problem is the size of the wealth gap between people, that's wholly unrelated to sports game tickets, and in the purview of government policy.
For all the problems in Qatar's world cup, a fan could watch two games a day, live,because the stadiums were that close. The 2026 bid maximized distances about as much as one could, vs, say, at least limit it all to the west coast, which would still be a lot by normal standards, bout would mean fewer huge metros where you could dip your toe in and ask for a ton of money, as there'd be very few games there.
And again, we are talking a team that won, and was among the favorites to win from day 1, just not being able to fill 1/3rd of the stadium, or anything close.
Not as much as the popular culture makes out. Association football (as opposed to folk football) was codified in English private schools such as Uppingham, and at Cambridge University. Working class people played very different forms of football at the time, including carrying the ball etc. Association football was the more genteel form of the game. It used to be the main sport at Eton College, not rugby.
Several of those games are cheaper to go and watch. In fact, it's cheaper to go to the opera or ballet than the football as someone pointed out to me, even though those have a different image. Season tickets to major clubs are extortionate. (Yes, that includes the SPL.) It isn't as working class as it makes out, other than the fact anyone can play it in the park. (But the same is true of other sports.)
Soccer has conflated its history with the medieval games of folk football (which looked more like rugby) and has basically covered up its posh origins. The "football" our ancestors played seven hundred years ago has almost no resemblance to soccer.
> depending on where you are in the UK,
I specifically referred to English clubs. The fact that other home nations prefer different sports has no bearing on English culture. The fact that multiple sports are considered working class has no bearing on the fact that football is one of those sports.
> Soccer has conflated its history with the medieval games of folk football
Irrelevant. My frame of reference was working class people over the last century. What Mediaeval England did was never part of my argument.
> What Mediaeval England did was never part of my argument.
Maybe not yours. But what is association football today is actually the gentrified code, which was only taken up by the working class later on. Most Working class football was rougher and more like rugby, gridiron and Gaelic, not soccer. But if you read most soccer histories, you'd think it was a smooth transition between the two.
It's used this working class status thing to put down other sports. I've seen that so many times.
Even in the early twentieth century, there were plenty of "gentleman amateur" football clubs that were part of a much older tradition.
I can tell.
> Maybe not yours.
So why do you continue to talk about it? I know the history and it’s not relevant to my argument.
> It's used this working class status thing to put down other sports.
I’m not doing that, so it’s irrelevant to this discussion.
> there were plenty of "gentleman amateur"
This is the only part that’s relevant. It’s not a rebuttal because a small number of clubs doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority were being supported as part of a working class community.
If we're talking about games out in the park, then football is "part of a working class community" that way. But most major clubs consist of eleven millionaires (plus reserves) controlled by a billionaire. Nowadays the players and the owners have little connection to whichever town they are based in. Nowadays, many of the fans of English clubs, and even the Old Firm, have never lived in (or near) the cities the clubs based in. They may have never even lived in the UK or the same continent. Man U is the most obvious example, but there are plenty of such fans of other such major teams.
Even if we go back a hundred years, the major clubs were owned by factory owners and other such types. Profit was a motive even then but not to the modern day levels where the jerseys change every other month to milk the fan base.
If you want working class football, then it's well outside the premier leagues and even first divisions. But unfortunately that's the stuff most people are interested in watching.
Anyway, I've probably written way too much on this subject. Other sports are available. Some of them are a lot more entertaining too.
I never said that.
> If we're talking about games out in the park, then football is "part of a working class community"
I never said that though it’s true, it’s not necessary for my argument.
> Even if we go back a hundred years, the major clubs were owned by factory owners and other such types.
True but irrelevant to my argument.
> If you want working class football, then it's well outside the premier leagues and even first divisions. But unfortunately that's the stuff most people are interested in watching.
Modern day Premier League attendance is a mix, depends on the club and it’s harder to assess because the class makeup of the UK has changed a lot in the past 50 years.
> Anyway, I've probably written way too much on this subject.
You have, most of it total nonsense. Best you stop before you show yourself up even more.
I know far more about the early history of association football than you do, pal. I was good friends with Professor Grant Jarvie's parents for years, before they passed away. Prof. Jarvie is the premier authority on sports history in Scotland. I learnt far more off him than I ever would off you, and we've discussed early soccer together. I've also researched some of these things personally. By research, I mean looking at original physical documents in the National Library of Scotland, not Google and Wikipedia.
If all you have to bring to the table is personal abuse, then that is on you, not me.
Trump and Kushners
"Joshua Kushner is now the kingpin in driving the sale of the World Cup to investors and family ties are tight around the project"[1]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/30/fifas-sale-...
Infantino & Trump's corruption is literally driven by greed. not the good greed - but just bad, power hungry insatiable greed.
Got friends working for them as developers. They ran away. In months
A private company answers only to shareholders.
They are no strangers to certain aspects of it. /s
For a second, I thought the Americanization[1] of fùtbol would be done gradually and no one would complain as we'd be slowly boiled. I'm glad the corrupt bastards got greedy/impatient and took a big swing.
1. Sports primarily as a business, catering to owners first, sponsors second, broadcasters third, and then lastly, fans. IMO non-profit sports organizations are the best model for fans, who I identify the most with.
The $15 billion figure is for FIFA's ENTIRE 2023-2026 revenue cycle, so not just this World Cup. But the obvious "low-hanging fruit" was making the tournamenta lot larger (104 matches instead of Qatar's 64), so a lot more tickets, hospitality sales, ads etc
Also two 3 minute hydration breaks per match, giving broadcasters additional advertising windows.
That's your "optimization".
But the only way they 10x is to start running more FIFA competitions, and that's when they encroach on UEFA's cash cows...
Interesting parallels to OpenAI.
The game was already hurt this world cup with the flow destroying „hydration breaks“ to sell more ads.
Hah and because Pizza Hut wants exposure, it'll come out more and more.