• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Qatar 2022

How small is too small? At which point do we draw the line? Five million residents? Six million? Seven? Each of those options cuts out whole swathes of genuinely interesting countries (New Zealand for one, plus a whole host of European/South American countries like Finland, Norway, Ireland, Uruguay et al) out of the list of 'nations who are permitted to try and build football legacies. And that's clearly fallacious given the genuinely long and interesting football histories of a lot of these small nations (forget New Zealand and the European country's even tiny ones like Macedonia, Iceland, Jamaica et al), including Uruguay (just one million more people than Qatar) who actually won the damn WC, ranking them on par with England (population: 50 odd million) and above India (population: one billion) and China (population: one billion, two hundred million), to take just a few examples.

Obviously there are many other factors besides population size when considering legacy affects of the the world cup and to be honest I'm not even arguing the merits of using that as a criteria for picking the location of a world cup. But in the case of Qatar a bit of common sense will tell you that building 12 or whatever stadiums that when full would contain almost 25% of the country's population (actually 100% of the population when you discount the 'expat' community) is nothing more than a vanity exercise for the Qataris.

As for the other other examples you mention, then yep I agree it can be argued that many of these places would greatly benefit from having a worldcup. IMO there is no compelling argument to have this world cup in Qatar, not one.
 
Last edited:
now, i don't think for a second it should be being held there, or in russia for that matter, and i'm sure FIFA's process is corrupt, but the fact that its never been held there before counts as a compelling reason for me, every World Cup should be held in a new country when possible imo
 
That North Korea video is a fake I bet.

Don't see the need to evangelise football world wide. Why? It went to the states, do they really need another sport? This opened up a "lucrative" new market but does football really need more money (especially when it never filters down to the bottom of the good chain)?

Play the World Cup in established footballing nations with at least half of their venues that are fit for purpose at the time of bid. That's my preference, it'll never happen. But I prefer tournaments in Argentina or Italy over Australia or Japan any day.

And any team that gets to host the World Cup must have a top 32 ranking at the time the vote is done.

Elitest? Yes. But that's what the World Cup FINALS is about.
 
There are a number of reasons why Russia shouldn't have been chosen, especially now, but there are also several compelling reasons that make them a good choice. It is a nation with a strong football tradition*, one of the largest* that haven't hosted before, and it has many cities that have clubs to use the stadia afterwards.

There is only one possible reason for choosing Qatar and we all know what it is. If spreading the world cup to the Middle East is the goal, then the UAE would have been a better choice as they have multiple cities that can host games.

* When we look at the larger countries with a football tradition we can see that most have hosted the world cup: Brasil, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico (all twice), England, Spain and Argentina. The exceptions are Russia, Turkey, Nigeria and Egypt. If you allow joint bids then several other compelling bids could be added: Netherlands/Belgium, Austria with Hungary or Switzerland, the Gulf of Guinea, etc.
 
Last edited:
a lot of those countries wouldn't even need to be a joint bid, the netherlands could easily host a brilliant world cup
 
That North Korea video is a fake I bet.

Don't see the need to evangelise football world wide. Why? It went to the states, do they really need another sport? This opened up a "lucrative" new market but does football really need more money (especially when it never filters down to the bottom of the good chain)?

Play the World Cup in established footballing nations with at least half of their venues that are fit for purpose at the time of bid. That's my preference, it'll never happen. But I prefer tournaments in Argentina or Italy over Australia or Japan any day.

And any team that gets to host the World Cup must have a top 32 ranking at the time the vote is done.

Elitest? Yes. But that's what the World Cup FINALS is about.

What a load of absolute ********. Why are you as a football fan more important than me because I live in Australia? I bet you've never dropped ~$5000 to fly 24 hours for a Spurs match.

Qatar is a joke, but I'd rather it go there than your idea.
 
The only protest that will work, is for a qualifying country to not turn up.

Russia has serious issues too, most of us forgot about that during the tournament though didn't we.
 
Here's a radical idea only allow countries with no history of human rights issues in their past or present, oh no there aren't any.
 
Or maybe just present.

Does that mean as an elderly white British man Im free from blame for anything the ruling elements of these isles did in the past 2 thousand years. I know I'm still a racist as I voted to leave the corrupt European political Union.
 
What's your point? Maybe North Korea would be a good place to host it. Is that what you mean?

My point is there seems to be a need to blame virtually every country in the world for crimes and hold their citizens to account for it. No one has a blameless history and I personally get annoyed that people want more confrontation rather than trying to move on.
 
My point is there seems to be a need to blame virtually every country in the world for crimes and hold their citizens to account for it. No one has a blameless history and I personally get annoyed that people want more confrontation rather than trying to move on.
No, the point is to hold the regimes responsible, not the citizens. In the case of Qatar there are outrageous human rights issues. So everyone should just shut up and let them continue their appalling treatment of what is virtually slaves?
 
My point is there seems to be a need to blame virtually every country in the world for crimes and hold their citizens to account for it. No one has a blameless history and I personally get annoyed that people want more confrontation rather than trying to move on.
Er....
Does that mean as an elderly white British man Im free from blame for anything the ruling elements of these isles did in the past 2 thousand years. I know I'm still a racist as I voted to leave the corrupt European political Union.
 

That's my point everytime I turn on TV theres someone telling me how awful my generation was, we were all sexist, racist and set out to destroy the plant. Stop trying to blame me get on and change the world and make a better job than my generation, it might mean putting down your smart phone and logging off socical media. Make a start by voting for any but the major parties in local elections.
 
Back