Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread - page 41. (Read 62712 times)

I would say we can't say it was just luck, sure luck played a part but it wasn't just about the luck, we had a lot of different results and I believe that they played alright as well, it doesn't look like we are talking about just this situation, Morocco was good and did manage to win no matter how much we think that they are not really that crazy good, we are talking about a team that is getting good without a doubt, that's the most important part.

I believe that as long as we trust what's going on, we shouldn't really have any issues at all. We need to make sure that everyone is exactly how we imagine it is, and not have any type of issues on the long run. If you keep thinking other teams are bad, then you are not going to get good results.

Every world cup, there is a team that goes further than expected, every single time, and this time it was Morocco, that's not luck, that's just the fact that we have some teams that does better than expected every time that's it. Next time we could have USA play the finals by "luck", does that mean they are great, no, but does that mean it's all just a luck? Also no, I think it's all about teams doing better, and luck combine to get a good result in the end.

Brazil, Germany, France - they're the titans of the World Cup. Why? Infrastructure. They offer the leagues, the junior systems, the entire shebang. The issue is, though, avoid sleeping on the underdogs. Africa boasts unvarnished skill. We are discussing actual potential here. Indeed, the leagues are less developed and the funds are not always available. But take a look at the African players leaving. They are illuminating the top teams in Europe. That event? That reflects the national team

Morocco in 2022 was a great event. The gap's closing. The next World Cup, big boys are still favorites. But an upset is not just possible, it's getting more likely every year. Keeping your eyes open will help. Talent is all around. The World Cup will soon become much more fascinating

It is quite the opposite. The strong players you are talking about play no more role in global football besides on Instagram when you look at Ronaldo. While you might have a point that it helps a little to improve the overall game, their domestic league isn't strong. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would put them at a 3 or a 4. And while English superstars play in the Premier League and Spanish superstars play in La Liga, I don't really understand why you think that barely any Saudi Arabian top players plays in one of Europe's best leagues. It is because Saudi Arabia barely has any top players. There are some, but other than some surprise wins against top teams lacking concentration, Saudi Arabia won't achieve much. The attention is quickly decreasing, these moonshot salaries are becoming less as they have noticed it is not sustainable, and Ronaldo is happy that he was the guy who could seal the deal of his life.

If Saudi Arabia were to bring in top players nonstop, then I would agree, but usually the players that go there have no more future in Europe. It is a money grab for them. I doubt that this helps the native players from there as much as you think.

As far as I know, adopting players from other countries is not possible for Qatar. I think it has to do with the situation they created once in handball and the FIFA has added some statutes that do not allow for any country to build some sort of superstar team for a competition. So "import" as you call it should not be an option anymore if I am not mistaken, but I believe I read about it.

Saudi Arabia has the potential to become one of the strongest teams from the Asian region, as they have a very strong domestic league. Legendary players from every nook and corner of the world are taking part in this league, and this in turn has resulted in native players performing better with each passing year. With Qatar, I will be a bit more skeptical. They are a small country with less than half a million citizens and unless they import players from other countries, there is no realistic chance that they will be able to beat the top teams in international football.

In Gulf region, we have race for best soccer team back in 90s as all countries spend huge funds for having good teams, but sadly they fail to achieve their because their domestic setup never works as we have in other Asian countries specially like Japan, South Korea and Indonesia but still they never stop with this, but we have only Saudi Arab and Qatar as best teams from this region and their domestic setup is also strong then others due to huge spendings which they are doing for development of these leagues.

Saudi Arab is one of the most consistent team in this region because they are having few advantages so they are doing good work for the development of soccer recently we are having their huge investments in their league with many quality players are having participation which is increasing popularity of the game with their vision of having changes are going to work because now world cup 2034 is going to be had new highs they are having good support from FIFA and other sporting organizations for having the best things for the soccer in the future.

Why are most of the nations mentioned the ones that usually win World Cups? Few selections, such as Spain and England, have only won one World Cup, but they are strong selections that can win another World Cup at any time. I believe that the culture and incentive for football in these countries are stronger and there is also money being invested in the profession.

Despite its bad phase, brazil has won 5 World Cups, but if its football doesn't improve or evolve in line with European football, it could be overtaken by Germany or Italy, which are the only nations behind brazil in terms of number of World Cups won.

Is it just a bad season or is brazilian football really on its last legs?

If you check which teams usually win the World Cup recently you can understand other than some cases like Argentina, usually, the countries win the World Cup when they spend more money on their football like Germany and England while the African teams can't do that, in fact, it doesn't make any sense for them to invest too much for football because in these countries people can't have enough food and we know football is not their first need,

it was simply a coincidence, let's also say that they won due to the opponent's demerit, it may have been the fault of the preparation or some stroke of luck but these teams are a more unique than rare event, in fact many of these teams also won due to the great luck, without taking anything away from their skill and their growth but in any case when they meet a worthy opponent they take great beatings!

Yes the teams you mentioned are one of the best teams in the world of football even they managed to win the FIFA World Cup multiple times. But many times we have seen that very strong teams are forced to lose to much weaker teams. You might have enjoyed the 2022 FIFA World Cup match between Argentina and Saudi Arabia. Did anyone imagine that Saudi Arabia would beat Argentina in that match? If we judge the performance and ranking between Argentina and Saudi Arabia in that World Cup and now, it can be seen that Argentina is far ahead, but they were defeated by a weaker team. So I think every team that has a chance in the World Cup is strong, they showed their strength and qualified to play here from the group stage. So it may not be surprising if we see a new team playing or qualifying for the 2026 World Cup in the main stage.

I agree with you. When compared to other regions such as America, Africa or Europe, Asia is the largest continent and is divided into 4 regions, namely West Asia, East Asia, Middle East and Southeast Asia. This is a very large and vast region and as you said, it will be very difficult for all regions to unite and form one league to compete like Europe. For example, Southeast Asia has a local competition outside the FIFA calendar, namely the AFF Cup. This makes it difficult for each region to compete with each other except in the Asian Cup or Asian Games.

It will raise the level of awareness in the country and naturally they will get better.  But I don't think it will change their national team much in the near term.  It takes generations to change a culture and in sports increase awareness is the first step.  More amd more top players will go there because they are using government money to pay these salaries so they are playing with a loaded deck.

African nations will not be able to win the World Cup any time soon because they do not invest much in football in their countries. This is different from European and South American countries that have first division, second division, third division leagues and have also played football in every corner of the country. In Africa, countries can only have a weak first division league, a much weaker second division league and a lot of corruption. Therefore, the few talented players will go to play in Europe, but when the national team plays, not all the players play for big European teams. They have to take some players from the local league and this greatly affects the team's performance. It seems to me that countries like Argentina, France, Germany and Spain will still be considered very strong in the next World Cup and Brazil still needs to improve because they are not strong.

Top European players recently signed by several Saudi Pro League team to purpose how advertising or promoting Saudi Arabia with their target become the host of World Cup on several edition later. Its not problem with Saudi Arabia club because they have much money and not get difficult after three consecutive season their financial keep stable although spent much money for salary payment of European players.

Since signed Cristiano Ronaldo many people around the world have know well with Saudi Pro League team name and I think before arriving Ronaldo difficult to spell or memorize with Saudi Pro League team participants. Just waiting with many top European players signed by Saudi Pro League team will make the Saudi Arabia national team get more stronger and qualify for the first time to knock out round or not?

Brazil has won the World Cup 5 times so far, Germany has won the World Cup four times so far, Argentina has won the World Cup three times and France has won the World Cup multiple times. Apart from the known teams we have mentioned, no new team has won the World Cup so far. In the 2022 World Cup we saw the African team Morocco play the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup which was a big achievement for a new team. However, even if the World Cup tournament is organized with more teams, there will be less chance of new teams doing well, the teams that we know and the teams that we think are strong are the teams that are performing well.

Asian soccer has never been ideal because we have too many issues with Asia is having 3 strong regions Western Asia, Central Asia and Eastern Asia in soccer currently we have strong teams from the Eastern Asia Japan and South Korea in Wester Asia we have Saudi Arab, and we have not solid development in South East Asia due to too much popularity of cricket.

Despite having very good economies and population things are not going as they needed due to personal conflicts and other things were mostly countries favour their regional partners instead of having some central policies I am no confident about their development as we have in African region because they are having good policies, and they are working hard for having better results in coming world cup mostly teams will be having chance of elimination in group stages with just Japan or South Korea can go for the next round but as we have some good work from Saudi Arab things can take good changes but it's also needed long time for having impact.

I agree with you. I think the main purpose of bringing in veteran superstar players is to promote Saudi Arabia especially SPL to the world. There are many rich businessmen in Saudi. If they want fame or want to be a pioneer in football they can buy a European club and then make it a team like City or PSG. But right now the Saudi Arabian government and businessmen are trying to promote SPL. We can see right now there are almost no football fans who don't know Al Nassr or Al Ittihad and the Saudi Arabian Pro League. Even if Ronaldo retires and there are no more star players there, I think the Al Nassr brand is already quite well known in football.

In my opinion, however, the fact of having so many teams is an evil in the sense that there will be more and more teams that will act as a mattress and the others will take advantage of it will surely be a different world championship where there will be many new nations that perhaps perhaps they would have dreamed of Participate in a World Cup, but in my opinion the gap is still wide for certain countries to compete with the big worlds!

The only thing they have in Saudi Arabia is money other than this they don't have the enough power to host the World Cup and I think FIFA just decided to let them host it because they can build a perfect Staduim like we saw in Qatar and even Saudi Arabia got more money than Qatar for it.
The thing that made me worried is about the bad weather in Saudi Arabia which can make it hard for everyone to spend time there while in countries like the USA and Canada, we have a much better situation.

I would say while it's good that they got some good players, they are world famous, but they are not as talented as they used to be. I mean can you imagine Benzema or Ronaldo to be starting at Real anymore? Of course not, Mane at Liverpool? Neymar was basically just sent away, because he costs too much for just staying injured, and proved that PSG was right but literally getting injured after just one game here.

So, the only thing these players are good for is marketing, nothing more. Don't get me wrong most of them are great for this league, Ronaldo has been scoring like crazy, but that doesn't mean they are good, that just means the league is terrible. This is why there isn't any interest even by the Saudis themselves.

It is certainly conceivable that when the number of teams is increased, there will be some relatively weak opponents in the main stages of the World Cup tournament, which may make football less competitive for them, but the chances of this happening are slim. Because there are still many countries who are playing good football but are not able to qualify for the main stage, if they get a chance they will definitely do well in the main stage. Copa América has some well-known teams and the rest never compete with those well-known teams, but that will not happen in the World Cup. As the number of teams increases, so does the number of groups and if there are two strong teams in each group then two relatively weaker teams will be added so that the stronger teams will advance to the next round.