Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread - page 155. (Read 62943 times)

Well.. a lot of footballers around the world originally were born and brought up in informal settlements. And this is true in case of Brazil as well. Favelas contribute to 4-5% of the population, but half of their footballers come from these type of settlements. Even in European countries that is the case. Look at the French team. A number of players, such as Frank Ribery and Raphael Varane were born in informal settlements. Even in Argentina, star players such as Diego Maradona and Angel Di Maria also hails from such settlements.

You can read the bio of many Brazilian players and they will say that they were growing in one of those favelas, that they did not have shoes or food, and they were playing football all day by kicking a ball of paper, etc.

That is very common in Brazil, and to a lesser extent, South America.

These kids grew up playing with the absolute minimum, just a ball made of paper or trash, and ended up being the best in the world.

Rivaldo for example has issues with malnutrition when he was a kid.

Correct, it is not as if the ceiling is going down what is happening is that the floor is going up, so in the past Brazil could destroy all other teams except those which were at the top with them as their level was too low, however with an improvement of training techniques and copying the techniques of the strongest nations around the world the other countries are catching up, however Brazil still is at the top simply because of their long tradition as a powerful soccer team.

It's not like Brazil is declining. The reason why you see Brazil not winning a lot of the tournaments is that the other countries have managed to catch up with them. Hundreds, if not thousands of Brazilian players participate in various football leagues around the world. In due course of time, the players from other countries also learn skills from them. On top of that, a number of Brazilian players have also got naturalized as citizens of other countries and now represent them in international tournaments. And it is not just due to lack of funds, but also due to lack of opportunities back at home. 

I once heard someone who said the following: when a person practices a certain thing a lot, that person achieves perfection. In Brazil people love football, even in places where there is no great luxury or conditions for playing football, people play football, this means that children start playing football from a very early age, which means that many people fill the stadiums football team to watch the games. The quality of league games is very good, reaching the point where even at the lowest levels there is a very good level of talent. This doesn't happen in the USA for example, how many neighborhoods and streets do we see children constantly playing football in the United States?

There are few places in the USA where you will see children playing, young people playing football, but when you look at basketball, then the situation is different, you will see someone playing basketball in every neighborhood. At most, I saw that there is a lot of football played in some neighborhoods, but I didn't have the opportunity to see if at all levels of football the stadiums have a lot of people, the same goes for Canada. but when we look at England, Germany, Italy, France we will see that when a small team plays and even if it is a team from the lowest bracket, there are people watching and the level of quality of play is very good.

When a government pays attention to sport, then sport will evolve a lot, but this same government must not put politics in sport, let the private sector take care of sport. Sport is a business in today's world and in that market and they need to have freedom. in Africa and even in South America, many governments control sport a lot and put politics in football to the point that club leaders have to be people from the political party that governs the country and in this way the leagues do not have attention and are without quality

Brazil must start paying more attention to their young talents, because there are many children born with great talent in the world of football. I'm sure if they can focus more on that, then they will again become a very feared country. Now they are also a country that is considered a lot, but lately they are declining.
It's unfortunate when they have high potential but can't utilize it very well, it's the same as throwing away the assets they have. Not many countries have the potential that they have in football.

There is big number of soccer talents all over the country. However limited players gets opportunity and the same is being utilised as a way to make money. In the name of getting opportunity to play different leagues people were bribed. This is commonly found everywhere and in larger extent the corruption throughout the country is another reason why the real talents gets hidden. The government is working with anti-corruption agencies ana all, however to get effective outcome is simply hard. When there is no corruption people will get proper coach and other support from the government to keep their talents growing.

In Brazil you can find many people with high talents they can have good performance in the next years when they get older but the problem with these people is they don't have good coaches to guide them. That's how Brazil loses talent they have because of the weak management they have, while other countries and especially the European countries will try to develop all the talent they have.
That's how Brazil is losing its power in the world.

Football is the most popular sport there, I have seen many videos circulating on social media showing almost every child already playing football there, not only on the field but also anywhere as long as they can play football. That's why there are many young talents who are very potential there, you could say they already have natural talent with their environmental habits. And they hone it by joining a soccer school or something like that, which makes their talents will be channeled properly.
They are indeed many who are born with talent and it is a very potential young seed that is in Brazil.

Money. That is always the answer whenever Fifa does something to be fair and this time it's letting it host by three different nations instead of just one, to increase the revenue if they can, last time it was Qatar because they got bribed billions, which was not just some rumor because even the president was fired for accepting a bribe, so it's an official fact.

All in all I am guessing that this will yield a good return as well so it will be profitable for Fifa to host it there in the end. Hopefully, next one after this will be a decent one, I really want UK to host one, all by themselves because they already have four nations there, it could be a Wembley finals, but until then we could see Ireland, Scotland wales all partake in it.

What makes football in Brazil great even though it is categorized as a poor country is, they are poor economically but they are very advanced in football. I think it is not suitable when Brazil's poverty is used as a reference as a poor country that is advanced in football. You can see that clubs in Brazil's top league often win the Libertadores and are often finalists in the Club World Cup. This means they have everything in football. At least Brazil has many talent scouts from various clubs or even from Europe, unlike countries in Asia and Africa where it is very difficult to penetrate the national level due to the lack of football facilities in those countries.

I am not sure about this. Brazil is a relatively prosperous nation, at least when compared to Asian and African nations. But it is true that there are quite a few informal settlements in Brazil (known as Favelas, with a total population of close to 11-12 million spread across 6,000+ localities), where the living standards are too low. But these sort of ghettoes can be found even in developed nations such as the United States and France. That doesn't mean that those who live there face too many obstacles in developing their game.

I keep hearing that this or that country is not great in football because they don't have enough money.

In reality, there are examples of countries that are great in football and are very poor, Brazil being the most extreme case. Many of the players in Brazil grew up playing football without shoes, and even without food some days. Still, Brazil is the most successful country in the World Cup history.

Most South American teams share a similar story.

So, there is the proof that you don't need money to be the best in football

In most African countries it's true that football is still at a developing stage where they still trying to find opportunities in sports investment especially with football, most investors and concentrated in Europe and probably other continents where the game of football and sports in general has past it's development stages and they could get good investment opportunities in sports.

It is mostly national investment for most African teams, they are mostly sponsored by the government of their various countries and at some point some well meaning individuals who have love for the national team or are showing some level of patriotism at some point.this can account for the poor performance and results gotten by African teams most of the times when they come for world cup games.

They also have little to no good sport facilities which was supposed to be used for their trainings, sometimes the travel to Europe to train because back here in Africa, except for national facilities like state owned stadiums, you hardly find another and sometimes this stadium happens to be in bad shape as they have poor maintenance culture so the comparison between Africa and Asia was not making sense as the difference that lays in-between is just too much.

There is even more drama surrounding the SoFi Stadium as one of the venues for 2026 World Cup. This particular stadium in Los Angeles is considered as the most expensive sports facility in the world, and it cost some $5.5 billion for constructing it. SoFi stadium was opened for the first time back in September 2020. However news reports indicate that the owners (Kroenke Sports and Entertainment) and not happy with their revenue-sharing agreement with FIFA and are now threatening to pull out of the tournament. More details can be found here:

https://www.marca.com/en/football/2023/09/22/650d00f3ca4741d6578b4597.html

Any Brazilian person thinks they are still ranked one in the world and many people there play football in the street with any object they find even if they don't have enough money to buy sports facilities but sill they need to have better management and better coaches other wise the Brazilian football is dying because the football we see in the world is developing every day and if Brazil don't develop itself they will lose everything.

I think football is more than a sport for the people of Brazil,  they value football so much. Every Brazilian sees football to be as a culture for them, they do not play football for the purpose of joining a big team to make money from it but they take football as a culture,  something they can do to entertain people for free. The way Brazilians take football that is why their pattern of football is quite different from other nations. I can the Brazilian people the owner of football.

Based on several article I read, more competitive with Brazilian player become professional football and huge pressure for them under 18 years old have braveness leaving their home and get challenge to Europe until Asian continent to be professional football and get their first club contract. I like with Brazilian motivation to be professional football and brave leaving their family, friend and their lovely environment to get their goals becoming first professional contract with top European teams. Some of them if failed above 18 years old make them have to leave football and working in their real life.

We can see with every years, Brazil have thousand football professional players active around the world and they don't afraid have to leave their live when still on the young age.

Not all of them because there are only a few football players from Brazil who are able to develop and become top players and most of the others may only play for local teams in the Brazilian League and having the view of making football a career choice is the desire of many people but again there are only a few who can make it happen.

Some people want to make football a career choice because they have seen how great or rich the top players are and that is why more and more young people want to become football players.

But so far there are several names of young Brazilian players who have emerged and are starting to be looked at by big European teams so it can be confirmed that the Brazilian national team might have players who can still be said to be quite great may.

I haven't seen anyone posting about it yet

FIFA members began their visits to inspect the cities and stadiums for the 2026 World Cup on September 20
After these visits, the city and stadium that will host the grand final will be chosen.
It seems that the decision is between the following cities: Dallas, New Jersey and Los Angeles and some sources say that Dallas (AT&T Stadium) is the favorite at the moment and should probably be chosen

Source

What do you think?