TeamSkyFans said:
I bow to your better judgement, ive never been to a football match in qatar unlike yourself. I stand corrected.
I was purely going on previous sporting events, moto gp etc, and their ability to build hi tech, state of the art facilities (like the new qatar shopping mall which i watched a documentary about).
The problem, which admittedly isn't as bad in football as in some sports, is that they can build state of the art facilities, but do they have any soul? The motorsports venue is a sterile, flat autodrome with acres of runoff and few legitimate passing opportunities. The only reason to go there and not to Spa or Dijon-Prenois is money.
auscyclefan94 said:
I have not been but a friend of mine has. he showed me pics of the match he went to and the brawls. It is also well known that they have 60 police to a game that gets about 8000 people to it which has ended up into pandemonium (sp
) many times.
Violence at football? What a shock. Try looking up River Plate vs. Boca Juniors, an Argentine footballing rivalry that is insane. Or Partizan Belgrade vs. Red Star Belgrade. Or Galatasaray. Or Millwall. The Italian league had to play games behind closed doors for a while because of it; English teams were banned from European competitions for a while because of it. The only difference now is that it's more well-controlled in the major leagues. If there are brawls at Qatari league matches, then that shows at least that people care about their teams, even if the way they express it is disastrous.
simo1733 said:
Some estimates say that the Qatar world cup will cost 40Billion dollars. That is absolutely obscene.
They have that money though. It's about selling themselves on the world scene more than anything else. It's just a genitalia-waving competition between them and the other Gulf states. You have F1, we have World Cup.
pmcg76 said:
A few points you need to take into consideration, lots of other countries who are soccer mad do not have big attendances in their local leagues. Here in Ireland, everyone is crazy for the English Premier League but out own League of Ireland is a semi-professional joke where an attendance above 2-3000 is amazing. Yet if one of the big English teams sends a crap team over for a friendly, attendances will jump 5-10 times. Everyone goes crazy for World Cups etc especially if Ireland make it.
Look around many European leagues like France or Portugal, look outside of the handful of big clubs and look at attendances at other games, very often they struggle to get above 10,000. France is a major footballing nation but interest in the French league is poor in comparison to Germany, England, Spain. In Italy the game is going downhill rapidly. World Cup grabs everyones attnention, its when the population whom never watch football suddenly become interested.
The Champions' League opening up to more than just the champions of each country has really created an imbalance where all the best players are all in the same leagues; you can more or less guarantee that most of the last 8 will be from EPL, Serie A or La Liga. You might get an interloper like Benfica or Bayern München now and again. The German, Dutch, French and Portuguese leagues see this much bigger dropoff in quality between the top teams and the bottom teams, and with the inability to attract the big names the teams' support dries up. You won't go week in week out anymore if you only have the big guns rolling into town twice a year instead of every month. Why would you?
Having lived in Australia, I was amazed at how little people cared about Rugby Union as Australia has been one of the top countries internationally. I had always been under the impression Rugby Union was big in Oz.
In all of the countries where it is big, except maybe NZ, Rugby Union is still the #2 sport at best. There are certain regional pockets where it is big - Toulouse, for example, is a city that mostly couldn't care less about football but loves its rugby; the French Basque country is similar. In France, Rugby is very much a southern sport. In England, there is a clear north-south divide between Union and League, though I won't pretend to know anything about league.
One of the main things in football's favour is that you don't need to spend hours explaining the rules before you start, you don't need to allocate many responsibilities for different roles to different people, you can play with any number of people greater than one, and you don't need any equipment other than a ball. As a result, it's an absolutely enormous participation sport. I've found myself in my childhood joining kickarounds with girls and boys I'd never seen before in my life and would never see again.
FIFA are looking to push the game into newer zones which is why they chose Russia/Quatar. I personally felt Engalnd was by far the best candidate for 2018 and I would have preferred for Australia to get 2022 as I am sure they would have done an excellent job of hosting but FIFA want to promote the game where it is less popular.
Well, there is partially that, and partially the money factor. It had been a tradition to take it in turns between Europe and South America, the traditional bastions of the sport, then it was becoming a tradition to take it in turns between developed footballing nations (France '98, Germany '06) and developing ones (USA '94, Japan/Korea '02, South Africa '10). Russia has it at the point that is seemingly for the next 'developing' football nation, though I'd say that the likes of Lev Yashin and Mikhail Streltsov point to a rich footballing history in Russia anyway. England's bid was mostly on sentimentalism, and they lost out because Russia is a combination of both an established football nation with a well-attended league, and a developing, hugely potential-filled market for the sport.
The 1994 World Cup took place in the US when soccer was nothing, most Americans didnt know it was happening but stadiums were still full and overall it was a success. Soccer is still lame in comparison to other US sports but when World Cup arrives, its amazing how many non-soccer fans now follow it compared to 20 years ago. Japan/Korea are harldy major Soccer nations either and their populations went crazy in 02 for the World Cup.
I think some questionable decisions and the unexpected passage of Korea to the semi-finals certainly helped that too; the '02 World Cup was the equivalent of the '09 Tour, very poor standard of competition covered up by intrigue. The people were really into it though, and that's what counts. Qatar has its own league, and a lot of the best players in the Arabian Gulf and north Africa play there; no, it will never take over from the big European and South American leagues in attracting the big stars, and just like MLS in the US or the J-League in Japan it will only really get the big money moves of an over-the-hill star (see Beckham to LA, Lineker to Grampus 8) over an otherwise mediocre standard; but it is no less developed a league than the J-League was 12 years before hosting the 2002 World Cup, or the American league in 1982.
Spare Tyre said:
Personally I don't care that Australia lost its bid. I'm well and truly over the "big events" stuff, having lived in close proximity to the Albert Park Grand Prix for a long time now, and hated that our state government spends something like 50 million dollars per year making it happen. I'm not at all convinced that the flow-on "multiplier" effect works as the theory would have it, in fact I'm highly skeptical.
I think a soccer World Cup would have been very popular with Aussies though. Certainly a damn sight more popular than the UCI Track World Cup currently being held in Melbourne. I reckon there must have been, oh, 100 people in the stands today. Obviously the event must cost a lot less, but I bet it's costing us a penny or two nevertheless.
Australia would be good hosts for the World Cup, and the matches would probably be better than in the oppressive heat of Qatar too. But 'twas not to be.
Oh, and Adelaide was a better venue for the Australian GP anyway.
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