Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread - page 288. (Read 62575 times)

That's right Arabs have really strict working conditions and sometimes that becomes difficult for a human to endure that's the reason for human life loss before world cup 2022 in Qatar.  
USA and Canada will organise world cup with much better facilities as they have organised before , Qatar had to develop everything from scratch that's the reason for high expense in 2022 world cup .

As I said yesterday, it's not easy to compare sports in the USA and sports in Europe. People in the USA consider sports like some kind of a show while in Europe we consider sport as a real competition. I'm not saying that Americans don't cheer for their clubs, but for them the show is more important than the sport itself. And it is precisely this show that allows the American teams to earn much more money through side activities.

Agree with you when I said about improvement, I look more closely at the improvement of the United States national team in its participation in the World Cup and re-appointing the United States as the host of the World Cup will probably allow them to appear even further when in 2026 it is not impossible to achieve that better than 2022.

But regarding this revenue comparison is really beyond my thoughts because the NFL is very dominant compared to the EPL or other leagues that I think are watched more throughout the world than American football.

I also think the reason why USA will be hosting most of the games in the 2026 world-cup tournament is because they are the main host, Mexico and casino are just an assist if am permitted to put it that way.
If for example, FIFA went with their previous style of one country hosting the entire world cup for the season, I believe it is the turn of the USA, so this is why FIFA has to focus more on USA and make sure most of the games are played there, like I said before, Mexico and Canada are just like an assist, they are just assisting.

Well... MLS doesn't need to compete with the European leagues. Even leagues such as EPL and Serie A are not that popular within the States. MLS need to compete with other sports leagues within US-Canada, such as NFL, NBA and MLB. And as of now, they are in a pathetic condition. Check my previous posts. MLS revenues are around 3% of those from the NFL. Despite the infusion of several star players (remember David Beckham signing a $50 million per year contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy?), MLS has failed to attract any interest within the United States. Players got rich, but that didn't had any impact on the ground situation.

Yes, I just found out that the USA will host most of the games especially the qualifiers onwards, 40 games to be exact and it's quite reasonable because they got bigger stadiums that can cater hundreds of thousands of people at once. The FIFA won't let the players get exhausted for travelling in and out towards other countries especially when the games are getting more intense.

Yes, China is indeed a country that already has athletes in almost all sports but is very behind in football and what you said is true because China and India do not have national football teams that are strong enough to be able to participate in World Cup competitions.
This can be because football is a team game consisting of 11 main players and several reserve players plus team administrators such as coaches or managers and many more so that it requires very large funds to be able to build and have a really strong and national team. worthy of competing in the World Cup.
The contract price for every player who has good skills and a pretty good football career is also very expensive so it may be difficult for a country to have good players in its national team.

The World Cup should include more teams. Fans who want to see their teams play can look forward to more matches. There may be drawbacks. Attendees may struggle to pay. To watch all 100 games, fans may need to take time off work and budget for travel and lodging. Some may find it hard to attend. Player injury is another problem. More tournament games mean more injuries. Concerned about player safety, clubs may hesitate to release players for international duty. Expanding the World Cup has pros and cons. Protecting players while producing a spectator-friendly sport is tricky.

Yes, it's not hard to do more games simultaneously, USA alone is a huge country, with great infrastructure to travel, Canada and Mexico will host only 10 matches each one, but it will help, so it's not a impossible task.


As I said above, I think it's not hard to do these 100 matches in 3 countries, specially with USA being the main host.
Maybe it could be a problem in the next editions if they choose smaller countries. But as everything indicates, the 2030 cup will also be in at least 3 countries, and the trend is that it will be like this in the future. Probably no more World Cup in just one country.


In my opinion there's a lot of improvement after 1994
1954 to 1986 they did not qualify for World Cup, but after that they only missed 2018 in Russia

I remember in 2002 they got to quarters, and lost to Germany, probably the best USA team I saw.
Unfortunately there was a handball that saved Germany, and in my opinion it was a HUGE mistake against USA, they would get to semi finals
Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctBKzj6HUSk

And after 1994 you can see a consistency in the United States, they are always trying to improve, always having a competitive team.
You also have to consider that MLS is always trying to attract good players and having more audience, but it is very hard to compete with Europe.

Well.. the revenue figures speak of themselves. NFL (American football) generates a revenue of $13 billion per year, while MLS (association football) generates just $461 million. The situation has remained the same, despite the fact that the United States receives close to 1 million migrants per year (mostly from countries such as Mexico where football is immensely popular). Americans are glued to their own versions of sports (baseball, American football.etc), which no one else in the world is interested. In Canada also they have the same situation.

Since the last ones were hosted by Russia and Qatar and they managed well. America just has to do it way more better.
And when I say well in case of Russia and Qatar, I mean it was visually well done but inside, Qatar did terrible things.

Wow, to be honest I didn't really thought that American national football league was generating so much money. In Europe, almost no one talks about American football and baseball. You'll more likely hear the word baseball stick used when someone saws a big fat stick but not a single word around the game itself.

Football (I'll never call it soccer ) is the most popular sport in all over the world, including Europe, Central America, Africa, Asia and still it doesn't generate a shit compared to the sports that are popular in America but unpopular in the rest of the world.

I don't think that popularity of football will be bigger in the USA after the next World Cup. After all, they are the only nation that call this game soccer. People in America look at any sport more as a show than a competition. After all, in the USA football is a game where players hold the ball in their hands most of the time. Am I the only one that find this fact funny?

I couldn't find any long term improvement for the United States, that came from the 1994 World Cup. Huge amounts of funds have been spent in popularizing football in that country, but the Major League Soccer (MLS) lags other sports such as NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB in terms of popularity and participation. Now awarding them the 2026 world cup is another attempt to popularize football within that country. What makes them think that the same strategy, that didn't worked well in 1994 will work this time around?

You have to know that football has history, and through that history, one can draw some reasonable conclusions that should not be a surprise. Even if a country is doing well in some other sports and facets of life, that does not mean that it would do well in football. And that reminds me, Pakistan and India are hardly mentioned in the world cup of this century. Pakistan is still better, but India has not qualified for several decades now.

I guess their sport councils should do better because I don't think there are no qualified talents among over a billion people in the countries.

Not surprising because before the 1994 World Cup the United States was also not a country that had achievements in football and one of the reasons for this appointment was to make football more known there and prove successful because their national team often played in the World Cup because they were able to pass the qualifying rounds continent.

LOL.. India is currently ranked 104th as per the latest table from FIFA, while Pakistan is placed at 195. Among the AFC teams, none of these two countries rank among the top-10 (India at 19th position and Pakistan at 43rd position). From 2026 onwards, there will be 7 slots for the FIFA World Cup from Asia. Looking at the current rankings, these 7 countries would be - Japan, Iran, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iraq. And for India, their star player (Sunil Chhetri) is close to retirement and younger players are not coming through the ranks.

It will actually be so interesting to watch India and Pakistan play in FIFA world cup, that's going to be one hell of an excited match to watch and I'm sure so many football enthusiast are looking forward to India Participating in FIFA.


Truly an event that brings people together, this is one of the event in football that brings both those who loves football and those who have no interested in football whatsoever. A once in every four years invent is something to really look up to.

1998 was the first world cup that I watched and I have only heard about the 1994 edition. I guess back in 1998 also a lot of people would have argued against expanding the tournament to include more teams. But it went rather smoothly. Now they are expanding the tournament again, after a duration of almost three decades. As I mentioned many times before, I am 100% in support of the expansion. 48 seems to be the optimal number, given the requirement to give adequate representation for all the confederations.

There will be approximately 100 matches for the 2026 edition, which is relatively higher than what we had during Qatar 2022 (64 matches in 28 days). But then, some of the leagues around the world have even more matches and no one complains about them. The English Premier League has close to 200 matches per season and no one argues that it is too long. World Cup happens once every 4 years and the fans deserve a tournament that lasts at least 1 month.

Yes, this is surprising that china has been participating in all the sports but they do not have a strong football team. You can see that in Olympic china participate in almost every game but why they never give importance to football, is really beyond my understanding. Same goes for India as they have also been lagging in this sports.


How can lack of education is the reason for India and China not participating in football events ? This makes no sense in my opinion.


To be honest, there is already a lot of color in football and yes, if India and Pakistan join the party, that will further increase the interest but i don't think that both teams caliber can take them to the fifa world cup in the next decade or so.

And don't forget the next World Cup will hosted by three separate countries, so expect that there will some games that will be played simultaneously. Although, everything are still in a projected scenario because as you've said the FIFA is yet announced the schedules and while the date is approaching, I think there will be some changes that will happen to maximize the profit and the audience and players won't be getting too tired from travelling all over across three countries.