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Comment by tverbeure | Hacker News Reader

There are 200+ participating countries. Many of those are on his side, because they’re tiny and easy to bribe: a few million is significant for them and often that money can be siphoned into corrupt pockets.

That said, a World Cup without any of the 55 UEFA countries wouldn’t make sense commercially.

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Past tense. Were on his side. He also just lost a unanimous vote with CONCACAF, the body representing many of the smallest islands least likely to ever qualify for the World Cup or actually generate money from football (and a small number of larger nations that will benefit significantly from his other pledges like more places for CONCACAF natons at the World Cup)

In addition to them all knowing that a World Cup without UEFA isn't going to happen, they also weren't impressed by being presented with a fixed offer and a ticking clock rather than an opening of negotiations....

CONCACAF almost always share opinions with UEFA, that really wasn't a surprise or anything new.

Its not just tinyness and poorness of the countries – it is also the indifference of many nations. Just because, say Brunei has the same voice as France, it does not mean that the sport, or the national team's performance is important enough for their people to care or even notice if their representatives are selling their nation's voice to the highest bidder.

But the USA men might finally do well!

Depending on whether the South American teams show up…

I like this map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_cup_winners.svg

Two world wars and one world cup...

You know which country the Nazi's fled to, right..?

Hint: the same one who act like strongmen on the field.

Mildly off-topic, but also mildly interesting.

The Wikipedia page for "Ratlines" [1] discusses "systems of escape routes used by Nazis and their collaborators" and how they settled in Rome, Spain, Genoa, and various South American countries.

But there is no mention of Werner Von Braun there - for that you need to go to "List of Germans relocated to the US via Operation Paperclip" [2], which is described as a list of "German scientists, engineers, and technicians (...) taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment".

So my answer would have been "everywhere", but apparently Nazis fled exclusively to South America while good, honest German citizens working for the official German party were taken to the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)#Ratlin...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_relocated_to_t...

I’ve bad news for you: Concacaf has also unanimously spoken against the plan. :-)

(Though AFAIK they haven’t yet threatened a boycott.)

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