The United States bid to host a World Cup in either 2018 or 2022 received a major boost from home region CONCACAF, with confederation board members voting unanimously to back the U.S. bid to host one of the next two World Cups up for bid.
"The United States can count on the full support of CONCACAF, including Chuck Blazer, Rafael Salgueiro and myself," said CONCACAF president and FIFA vice president Jack Warner.
With Warner, Blazer and Salgueiro all holding votes on the FIFA executive committee, the U.S. bid has taken a major step toward securing one of the two World Cups. The 24-member FIFA Executive Committee will decide the venues for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup in December 2010.
What do you think of this news? Excited to think the World Cup could be coming back to the United States?
Share your thoughts below.
Yeah, you could argue that, but you’d be wrong, seeing as how there are only two major soccer playing countries in North America, and as you say, it’s a big world. On the flipside, half of the teams in the World Cup are European. So three straight World Cups outside of Europe doesn’t make sense, nor is it going to happen.
Also, as a side note, your point about the Olympics ratings isn’t really accurate. Beijing ratings were good in absolute terms but pretty poor compared to past Summer Olympics when you factor in US population growth. Anything that Michael Phelps wasn’t in (besides the opening ceremonies) didn’t actually get very good ratings by any measure. And Winter Olympics ratings are consistently bad.
It’s a big world. You could argue that having six straight World Cups outside of North America wouldn’t make any sense either. And I don’t really believe any corruption would be involved. The closest sign of that was FIFA ending the rotation policy, which, while not really corruption, was at the least a little unfair. But apparently soccer’s governing bodies don’t have a big problem changing the rules midway through the process.
I know back in the early 90s, FIFA talked about rotating the World Cup amongst the 5 big Federations. In light of that, Germany getting the Cup was a surprise to many people, although perhaps expected due to the reasons many people have raised. Having said that, if you follow the rotation, then CONCACAF is due in 2018.
That crook Warner’s public statement just means the USA is out of the running and he’s taking the necessary precaustions to cover his ass.
If anyone can navigate the backroom politics and broker a deal to get US the cup it’s Warner…
So after my optimisn took a body blow over the Olympics, I’m feeling *slightly* more confident in the World Cup.