/snip
But I find it funny how host countries are sometimes able to somehow beat favorite teams. Russia played so well that they were eliminated in quarter-finals while almost beat Croatia, that went into finals and Qatar beat Argentina, a team that defeat all the other teams and won Fifa World Cup.
Russian players were definitely on steroids because they were running like horses but idk about Qatar.
Qatar didn't beat Argentina in the World Cup. They played really badly and it was evident that they don't have the quality to play against top teams of the world. They played four games in the group stage and managed to score only one goal against Senegal.
But I see your point. Playing at home often makes players give an extra effort for the fans and then surprises can happen. But sadly that didn't work out for Qatar.
Not that kind of advantage really that will boost the team's morale, I strongly think that it is the other way around where most of them are already feeling the pressure because they are the host and the people, and their federation are expecting that they can at least defeat some teams along the way so that the host team, for example Qatar, will still be relevant and won't get embarrassed in the early phase.
The thing about the house and the advantage is somewhat ambiguous, if it is necessary to consider that a host team has a little more advantage, but you must have a little more tact when it comes to giving a red or yellow card, because it is the advantage of the host, then it cannot be dealt with radically and harshly either, the hosts are the ones who usually win the first game, but in the case of Qatar things were very different, they even said that Ecuador had offered a lot of money to the players to let themselves win, I don't know if it was speculation or truth, but somehow that causes a lot of curiosity.
in the past, countries that had strong teams struggled to organize the world cup because they had expectations that they could win the world cup, and they had a strong team, they had luxury hotels, so everything was heading towards high profits and prestige when they won the world cup they were organizing, but now the situation has become different
many countries are wanting to organize the world cup just for the profits they can get and the publicity that the hotels, beaches and many places of entertainment that these countries will have with the organization of the world cup, and I do not blame them because soccer today nowadays it has become a business, everyone wants to make money in this market, even fifa benefits a lot from it
Let's be realistic, in the past the journey was much longer, for example the national teams traveled to the first world cup in Uruguay in 1930 for weeks on a passenger ship, and they would arrive at the world cup tired and unprepared. At that time, the household advantage was really great, but it has not been like that for a long time.
Today, many small countries without a football tradition, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and others, want to organize the World Cup in football due to the possibility of making money but also promoting their unpopular regimes in the world, and this is a fact.
For them, football results and successes are actually secondary in that story.
After all, Qatar spent so much money on new football stadiums that they are actually at a loss after the end of the World Cup, but that obviously doesn't even matter to them, because they got a lot more than possible earnings from the World Cup, and that is a big international promotion of the country.
Yes, in that sense you are absolutely right, they didn't really care about ROI, because they just wanted to show that their country is very big in terms of wealth and above all they wanted to let people know what kind of culture they have.
What I found strange is that they didn't give large corporations the opportunity to advertise, which, I don't know if it was good or bad, what I could see is that this culture is very radical, they respect their laws and even though they have very strict rules, things work very well under a regime where everyone in that country accepts it, and the quality of life is quite high. There was a lot of criticism, but as I said, everyone has their rules and visitors must abide by them, and that was something that many visitors did not like.
