Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread (Read 46643 times)

Yes, I agree that a huge funding is needed from these teams to actually make football very popular in their country. In my understanding football is still a very popular sport in these countries. It's just that the kids love to play football. But there is no incentive for them to actually take football as their profession. In India, cricket is literally the better sport to play. And if you are selected to play in the IPL, you do not have to worry about anything anymore. China is definitely a lot better than India in football. But probably they are just not that worried about getting better in football. Or maybe they cannot afford to spend so much money like the Saudis or the Qataris.

In fact, there are several Asian players who play in Europe's top leagues, such as most South Korean and Japanese players. But there are still many of their players who come from domestic leagues at different levels. But if you look at the history of the world cup I think Asia and Africa are at the same level even though Africa looks better. If we ignore South Korea, which managed to qualify for the semifinals with controversy, then the Asian teams have only managed to reach the last 16 and none have yet made it through to the semifinals. From what I read it says Morocco was the first African country to make it to the semifinals and they had no controversy.

He is too young to retire if you ask me, he does look older than how old he is, dude is 64 years old and looks ten years older than my father who is at the same age, feels like he is retiring way too early. If he stays at Real Madrid for another 10 years then I would understand, but if he plans on retiring at 66 years old as a manager, I feel that is way too early for such a manager to retire, feels like he should probably consider retiring a bit later. That is of course not something I would assume would be that easy.

It is going to be quite difficult for him to stop considering he will probably get bored after a while and he will have offers endlessly all the time from clubs all around the world, so I do not think that he will retire.

Then you know and you have more information about the Asian countries. Asian countries were mostly trying to hire the coaches from the European countries to develop their teams and get improve to have better performance in the next season. For example, you mentioned South Korea when they were using Guus Hiddink as their coach and we saw the amazing results from this team.
Now I think the Arabian countries are even investing and trying harder than before which means maybe we can see the teams like Saudi Arabia have better performance in the 2026 World Cup.

I come from Asia and all your opinion trues how difficult reach the higher level in FIFA World Cup every edition moment, except on most controversial FIFA World Cup 2002 when South Korea under Guus Hiddink as manager success qualifying until semifinal round and next edition never see yet the Asian national team reach to semifinal or final phase. I think the development of Asian teams not easy because dominance of their players only existing with their domestic league, difference how Argentina achievement last edition world cup success become the winner most of them played with top European teams.

Its difficult if Asian players existing in their domestic league only will reach higher level in World Cup every edition moment, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Qatar seems still weakness national team when playing in World Cup and most highest their achievement qualified to 16 of round only.

For me this is good joke as you don't know why Europeans provided more slots in FIFA World Cup because look like you have no idea how things are working around, and you are doing things just by own mind with never check about the competitiveness of this region in soccer and their huge investments which are not paying them good return they are having one of the best and strongest system in soccer which is helping them, and they are also having things which are helpful for them in all aspects here in Asia just personal egos and hate is doing things badly down.

In last few years, we are having good development in African region which is helpful for the game and them with this all we can expect better things even still it's not easy because they need more work to do for the game and development of the players which are already doing impressive work and having their mark into UEFA region which is impressive for them and their all system.

Asia is one of the most populated continent with having very interesting geopolitics, but sadly they are never been had anything for the development of this game soccer which is really sad for the billions of peoples those are living here and watching soccer without their own hero's and this all is happening just because of having not strong central sports organization which bring some strict rules like we have in UEFA and other continents which are helping them for development even now African region is having amazing development, and they are doing impressive work for this game and players development.

We have China and India which both are having just one or two appearances in FIFA World Cup which is matter of shame and few countries which are doing good but mostly are not working for the domestic leagues which are also important for the development of the game with recently we have huge investments from Qatar and Saudi Arab, but these are also not helpful for the game they are doing these things for the own interest I have strong feeling this is never been easy to have good development for this game in this region in near future it's going to take time like decades.

Yes, that because several Asian countries with good sports development, especially football, really want to be able to compete for tickets to take part in the World Cup, this is really big competition and something everyone has been waiting for.
Just being able to enter the group phase gives happiness and also sense of pride in abilities, even though in the group phase there are definitely many difficulties that result in them being eliminated.
We will see fierce competition when we enter the third round and in the third round it will be filled with the strongest from several Asian countries such as Qatar, Japan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.
They are the strongest and always dominate every Asian competition, perhaps for the qualifying round the Asian zone will still be dominated by them and for the determination it will definitely be very tight competition.

Of course, the governments of countries in Asia are quite pessimistic about the soccer industry being able to enter the international arena and get trophies, such as the world cup for example, the developments that occur are only for the purpose of accommodating talent interest. I see no soccer academy that really focuses on developing the skills of young people in building football to be much better, this can be seen from how much development it brings and how often the governments of Asian countries are very actively involved in soccer in providing support, the thing that makes pessimistic is probably because the average body is small so maybe not so focused.
 India is very difficult even though in terms of body physique I think it is quite large, but they don't really like soccer so there is no massive talent development there about soccer, meanwhile China, Iran and Japan have been quite decent in recent developments, hopefully they can compete in the world cup later, because I am waiting for Asian representatives to reach the final and win the championship.

Middle east has always been a great force in football in AFC region. Saudi Arabia actually is in the top position in reaching finals of Asia cup tied with South Korea but having more titles that South Korea which is again the 2nd position tied with Iran. Iran is a much older footballing nation with it's population totally crazy about football. Qatar too is not a new team but their performance has increased only recently after huge state investment.
AFCs have 8 slots for the 2026 world cup and currently the AFCs top teams are represented by Japan, South Korea and Australia in the east and Saudi, Iran, Iraq and Qatar in the middle east.  They'd most probably be allocated the slots, the remaining one could be UAE.

I don't know the reason why Europe provides more slots for FIFA World Cup finals than the rest of the other continents even when Europe isn't the biggest continent neither the second biggest continent of the world. To me, I think it's not fair for Asian and African continents. Since it's called the World Cup, I think every continent should have the same number of slots especially or something slightly different.
We understand that the European nations are better in terms of quality football but I feel the other continents can as well do better of they get the chance like their European counterparts. In the last edition of the FIFA World Cup, we saw an African team Morocco reach the semi finals of the competition which was the first in the history of the competition. The difference in number of slots between European nations and other continents is just too big if you ask me and I wish FIFA can review and do something about it.

I was quite surprised when I heard through the news that Ancelotti was really excited and felt challenged to coach a national team as big as Brazil, the Brazilian national team contains great talent, especially Vini Jr and Rodrygo are already used to Ancelotti's leadership style because they are both Madrid players, I was really curious about Ancelotti coaching the Brazilian national team, it seems he will be able to make Brazil compete with the Argentinian national team and also the French national team.

There are many more countries in Asia and that's why I think they should get more tickets for the World Cup. However they are not strong like the European teams and maybe that's why FIFA decided to give them more chances and more tickets, otherwise, I think Asia could get more slots. However I think many of the top Asian teams like South Korea, Japan, and Iran will not surprise us after being in the 2026 World Cup but after the development they had in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, I think this time we are going to see more, and better Arabian countries in the 2026 World Cup.  

That's a good improvement too and I have always felt that these two continents are probably been cheated ever since because Europe and south America are the ones with the highest number of teams especially Europe but although it's quite understandable to some point as they have more teams who can play the game of soccer more and when it comes to the world cup, entertainment is what all the football fans are wanting and I hope this time around these additional teams can even make the competition more magical.

When referring to the FIFA rankings as of February 4, China is in 88th position while India is in 121st position. In terms of population, these two countries are indeed recorded as countries with the highest population levels in the world, but specifically in football, China is still better than India. Maybe because each country has its own favorite sport, such as India being more inclined towards cricket, so the prestige of football in that country fairly low. Some time ago China made a breakthrough to make their football better, by building a league and recruiting several top European players. Almost the same as what Saudi is currently doing, but overall China has not been able to record significant achievements.

To promote and attract interest in football, appointing a country as organizer of the World Cup is one of the best solutions, because the World Cup event can attract the attention of the wider community. Currently, countries in the Asian region that are seriously showing interest in the development of football are countries in the Arab region, such as Saudi and Qatar. These two countries have made quite large investments to advance their local football, of course this can be an example for other countries.

All countries, of course, are now starting to prepare their teams well, including teams from Asia, so far Indonesia has been able to show a pretty good performance and even began to be favored to win over strong Iraqi teams and also other Southeast Asian representatives, namely the Philippines, many changes have occurred since the change of PSSI chairman, currently Indonesia is starting to be quite able to compete with other strong teams after they naturalize each player Descendants who are in the Europa League, currently maybe almost 90% of Indonesian players are filled with players who have Dutch descent so it is not surprising that their performance and mentality are starting to improve, especially now that Indonesia is coached by coach who are indeed able to provide brilliant achievements for South Korea before.


Naturalization carried out by their football authorities certainly gives high hopes for Indonesia to qualify for the World Cup through the Asian zone, but I think by continuing to naturalize players like now it will only slow down or prevent the emergence young talents of their local players in the future, especially if we see that most of the players naturalized by Indonesia are players aged 23 to 25 so that it is It can't be their long-term project later.

Trust me if India and China are able to show performance and get popular with this sport, the popularity of this sport in this Asian region is going to increase a lot. China and India are too very big influential countries in this region. if they start showing much more interest in football, the other smaller countries are going to show interest by just being influenced by them. But both of them seem to be very interested in other sports a lot more. India is a special case. They are very interested in making money wherever they go. They are more interested in cricket because they can make huge amounts of money from cricket by having the biggest influence in cricket over anyone else.

But regardless of that, the popularity of football seems to be increasing in the Asia region. And a lot of countries seem to be improving in football. Of course not to the extent of the European countries or the American countries. But it is improving.

Here I agree, Asia is still far behind in soccer as their AFC Champions League is also not competitive which give them better results, and they are also having many other challenges which need to be fixed before having good results in this sport in last few years we are having good development in few countries like already mentioned which is positive but still we need to have done big part of development which is not easy.

Japan, Korea and Iran are doing good work which is helping them for having better results with China and India needs to work on as well because these are most populated countries with China is doing good, but India is difficult country so it's never been easy for them to have things like which they needed for the development of this game with they are cricket lover nation.

In near future, we will have some good performances which will surely bring good improvement in quality which is essential with consistency is the key for them 2026 World Cup could be having no surprises, but after these events surely are going to be more interesting as many countries are doing good work, and they need to be stick with their policies for the development of this game.

I think you need to follow few things before posting like this with Carlo Ancelotti is already under contract with Real Madrid till 2026, and he will retire from this job with age of 66 and have no chance of any job in future as he extended his contract with Real Madrid we have announcement from the Brazilian Federation about the new coach which is already working and trying to have improved quality and performance which is surely not easy job, but they are doing this all.

Fixing problems in Brazilian soccer have never been easy for any coach specially with the person who is having no experience of coaching any national team and as we are also having corruption into this sports organization which is killing the game and surely going to have worst end of this all in near future.

But still Asia is not so talented in playing soccer so far, Asia's achievements are very small in the international arena in the field of soccer, I feel that, although in the Asian league it is quite interesting because maybe there are some great ones like Japan and Korea one of them but still they can't reach the final league and win the world cup, maybe one of them is because the soccer industry in Asian countries is not focused so that not so many people are interested in building their careers early on to become great soccer players, meanwhile the soccer infrastructure is also not so concerned from the average country in Asia, which is one of the factors inhibiting the development of the soccer industry in Asia.

Of the countries you mentioned, it is indeed they who are the average subscription to get world cup tickets, but a little note that Indonesia and Thailand must also be considered at this time, because they are also developing quite well, so most likely they will complete the world cup in 2026.