Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread - page 65. (Read 62776 times)

The problem with Saudi Arabia is all they have is money and they cannot use the potential they have. In fact, one reason for the Saudi Arabia teams to buy superstar players and spend too much money for these players is that they want to be a more powerful country and be a better host for the World Cup in the next years. This can help this country to earn to more money and on the other hand this can help Saudi Arabia to have more and better players in the country and attract more attention.

Honestly, the problem is in recent times the people around the Arab area, I am talking about the Saudi, Qatar, and also the Emirates people, have actually become a little weak. It seems like they like to not do any physical hard work. It’s simply like that saying, hard time creates hard men, hard men create soft times, soft times create soft men, soft men create hard times. I think these people are going through a soft time right now. And that has created a lot of soft men who really do not want to work. But that is just my assumption. They are actually promoting football a lot in their country. Let's see if that actually makes a difference or not.

To be fair world stuff, basically political stuff, is a very hard one to judge without being in it, and harder to judge when you are in it. Who are the Fifa rule makers or decision makers to ban a team, or unban a team? Like if you ban a team, are you taking their own situation into consideration, how are you so quick to judge, let's take for example Russia, when you ban Russia, why are the players taking the blame for what Putin did.

But also, if you look other side, if you unban Russia, then which Ukrainian did you ask for it first? They are still dying for that matter, so how can you unban them.

This isn't really Fifas job to judge wars all around the world, they are not responsible for making decisions at all, that wouldn't be fine. Nations could get together as a whole, all of them have federations, and make it democratic and vote accordingly.

Qatar qualification so far has been full of controversy and even during the match against India we could see a controversy about the goal created, so that many parties claimed that Qatar qualification was not purely because of their ability but rather the help of the referee who has often sided with them so far in the Asian qualifiers, but even so, of course, we have to admit that Qatar, which does not have a football culture, is now starting to turn into a country that focuses on football as their main sport, Qatar has formed a league that is indeed fulfilled and requires the presence of European players in the club, so that it will make local talents able to improve their performance and also of course it will be beneficial for the Qatar national team.

We cannot deny that the ability and financial strength that Qatar currently has makes it very easy for them to provide modern facilities and infrastructure to support their football development, so I think in the next few years we may see Qatar and Saudi Arabia become football powers that will indeed be able to compete with countries such as Brazil and Argentina. 

Well, that is one understanding of what has been said, hopefully the decisions taken will be truly fair and will not cause conflict or problems that are much more complicated, however in fact they all have the right to participate.
This is sporting event and it would be very unethical if external problems came in and had negative impact, not only FIFA which was affected but also several other countries competing in the World Cup.

What is clear is that only FIFA can resolve this and they must be able to take firm and truly fair stance in transparent manner without burdening or favoring just one party.
I not really interested in defending one of them but what is clear is that it would be shame if something bad happened when the World Cup competition started.
I hope that the competition can run normally and cleanly, there will not be lot of drama that occurs and bad things that could hinder the smooth running of the World Cup.

First of all, Qatar qualified from the Asian region to play in the main stage of the World Cup. It is definitely a big achievement for them because India has tried hard but has not been able to participate in the main stage of the football world cup so far. Since they have so much potential, they can take their potential to a better level. As Qatar has been doing a lot with their football, it would not surprise us if Qatar does well in the upcoming FIFA World Cup tournaments. Qatar may now be trying to strengthen their country's football pipeline, which is why they have hired experienced coaches at the field level to find talented footballers. If they try and spend enough money, Qatar will be one of the strongest teams in football.

I agree with you. Qatar, which has strong finances, should be able to form a good national team squad with the investment they have made. Currently they have done the right thing by promoting football in their country. Qatar is not a football country but they can try to introduce football to the young people there. They can invest to build a world-class football academy. They can also do what Saudi Arabia did by bringing in world-class veteran players. Or they can also build connections with several football clubs in Europe by sending their potential players. Qatar should be able to do anything with the money they have.

I think it is more about getting consistent rules, that's the hard part. If you ban Russia from the games because they attacked another nation, then not banning Israel would be very tough, because they did attack another nation too, what would be their defense to keep Russia out but keep Israel in?

I am sure that many people will argue, after all there were some differences, but in the end it's still a tough and sensitive one, and not at all agreed by everyone. While some might be pro-Israel, some are pro-Palestine, whereas in Europe most are pro-Ukraine and can't find that many pro-Russian nations to be fair. This is why I think getting a consistent rule would make things easier, and would allow them to draw a line which would make things clearer.

These teams need to invest in youth divisions, like... starting from an early age in training children and young people, otherwise they will always just be participants in competitions, without aiming for anything other than participation... the future of these teams at world level is to try put sport in people's lives from an early age...and maybe in a few decades Qatar or other teams of lesser importance today could try to play on equal terms against the big teams.

No, the highest performance in the World Cup for an Asian nation is the semi-finals in 2002 edition hosted by Japan/Korea. South Korea made it to the semi-finals defeating teams like Poland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Africa also has a single country that has gone to the semi-finals when Morocco surprised the world with an exceptional performance in the last World Cup.

I don't think Qatar invested so much in the World Cup because they want their national team to win the competition. The Maroons is not a team that could compete with big football nations. Qatar hosted the competition for other reasons like publicity, business, and global acceptance. Most Islamic nations are trying to modernize and showcase themselves as a potential tourist and business hub. They don't have good players and their society is not friendly to migrants. Most countries depend on migrants in their national teams

As a host Qatar performance in World Cup 2022 is compeletely messed up because their final position at the bottom of group standings because Qatar gets 3 losing streak but i think Qatar can learn from their previous mistakes and they improved a lot and the latest proof is Qatar has done well in Asia because currently they are defending champion of Asian Cup but they want more and they were targetting to participant on world cup 2026 and lately Qatar was succeed to advances to the 3rd round after finish at first place of Group Standings on 2nd stages

We are still wait for drawing stages on June 27 and Qatar was into pot 2 with Australia and Iraq and about their chances to advances to the world cup think it's very wide open considering for Asia there will be additional quotas for the current world cup moreover Qatar will into easy group on 3rd round but indeed maybe if Qatar can able to the world cup i think similar to other Asian Teams that i think it's hard for them to compete with other strong teams from Europa and South America teams

FIFA ranking won't tell you everything you need to know. In fact, there are many teams with good ranking in FIFA ranking but they are not good enough. I think still Portugal is not a good team to even win the World Cup at least they can't do that with the current team they have because Portugal is nothing if they don't have Ronaldo in the team.
We recently saw them losing the game against Croatia when they didn't use Ronalod while they won the game against Irland with Ronaldo in the team which is a great weakness in Portugal.
  

Qatar is not a country with a good football culture like Brazil. So for now I think it is still difficult for them to compete at the world cup level. But I see the Qatari government really cares about Qatari football and with their wealth they are really investing in football by hosting the 2022 world cup as well as hosting the AFC 2023. They have also invested in several football training camps there. Qatar will become one of the strongest countries in the world of football but this will take quite a long time because it takes years to build a strong football culture in a country.

If follow developments, this is very unfortunate condition, the conflict that occurs causes everything to be unable to be managed easily and football, which is the sport most loved by everyone, is also affected by the impact of the conflict that occurs.
Whatever it is, I think most people, especially the countries taking part in the World Cup, will definitely agree with it and indeed FIFA must immediately resolve it to be able to create more comfortable situation as time progresses towards the World Cup competition starting in 2026.
We see what will come out of FIFA decision in the future, what is clear is that if it has good intentions for the 2026 World Cup competition, I sure there won't be many people who will be able to dispute it or debate the results of FIFA decision.
Indeed, this is very difficult condition, there will be one party who will suffer loss and indeed there will be majority who will gain so, FIFA must be able to be fair in resolving it, but on the other hand, I think FIFA will get pressure.

If you look at the current FIFA rankings, based on the official FIFA website, Portugal is ranked 6th in the world and 4th in Europe. That is not a small number and it does not make sense to say that Portugal is a small team if you look at their ranking. I wonder why there are some people who say Portugal is a small team in football just because they haven't won any world cups. When they won Euro 2016 they were ranked 8th in FIFA.

If there is a small team that is surprisingly capable of winning the Euros then I think it is Denmark and Greece. I don't think anyone thought they would win the Euros at that time. In my opinion, what makes someone think that Portugal is a small team is because of the high expectations of the public or because they brought in players who are not well-known enough in the big European leagues. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Iraq is a strong problem for the other teams against it, I watched the match they brought and it was pretty good, it's natural for Iraq to be in the position now, this is very difficult for some teams to admit but indeed Iraq is one of the teams that is very strong from several other Asian teams in Group F and is at the top of the group.

Meanwhile the Philippines is not so good at getting points this is very difficult for the Philippines, I think there needs to be more improvement because the Philippines only got 1 point from the draw while from the rest of the match it suffered a very sad defeat, meanwhile Vietnam which was the second strongest candidate can be defeated by Indonesia in several matches, and only 6 points so far, and only in 3rd place, and it was unexpected that Indonesia who got much better development this season because they could get the second place group champion which led them to enter the next round of this qualification, with a total of 10 points.

Although Asians do well in cricket, Asian countries do not perform very well in football. A few countries from Asia qualified for the FIFA World Cup and most of the countries that played in the main stage of the World Cup were eliminated from the group stage. Only Japan and South Korea performed slightly better than other Asian teams, still qualifying for the quarter-finals was the highest achievement.

2022 World Cup was hosted by Qatar and they invested huge amount of money there. Qatar invests a lot of money behind football and yet their team does poorly in the World Cup tournament because Qatar does not have players in its pipeline like the big European teams who can support the team. As in Brazil, football is constantly being produced in Qatar, but not like this, that is why Qatar cannot perform significantly well in the World Cup

China saved by Thailand... anyone seriously think they could qualify for 2026?

Oh and anyone read about the unions all getting together against FIFA for the expanded games format? I don't like FIFA but they actually only account for roughly 10% of all football games -- even fewer than club competitions outside national leagues. Given that FIFA spends in developing football in emerging economies, I feel like it's slightly unfair to lay the blame on them while ignoring the extreme shortcomings of AFC, AFCON, CONCACAF and even UEFA, no? Or national leagues for the not-brilliant idea of playing national cup ties abroad (looking at you RFEF).


I did not! I'm not in the best of places at the moment for this tournament for live betting. Real life is so busy, and then I'll be in a completely different timezone at the end of the group stages, so it's not an ideal situation to be doing live bets ;

However, MD1 isn't even over yet and we've already seen two such instances where you could bet on Albania, and then Poland with really great odds prematch, and then bet on the fav after conceding.

I didn't see Italy odds after Albania's 1st-minute goal but Netherlands were immediately 2/1, before settling 10 seconds later to 16/10 (boosted) after Poland's opener. In hindsight, they were lucky to win but you would have to say with their lineup, scoring 2 and not conceding any more was very tempting.

Quotes definitely become immediately unreasonable -- it's not easy to catch it on live but it has definitely happened for me before

Iraq performance is appreciable and I encouraged that team to play good and qualify for World Cup. Now ,Iraq qualify for the third round . Iraq team position is very strong and it is at the top in group stage. In last match,I enjoyed every moment of match and match was interesting and nobody felt bore . Vietnam lacked in many things and Vietnam did only one goal and out of the third round . Iraq position is  third  in a group stage and points of Vietnam are 6 but Iraq points are 18 and at the top of rank. Indonesia team performance is best in this round and they will qualify for 3rd round easily . In last match Indonesian team score was 2 and Phillipines score was 0 goal . Phillipines are out of the qualifier round.

Protugal doesn't have a weak squad, they are one of the best team in Europe when it comes to international football. If they were a weak team, they wouldn't have won the Euro 2016. No weak team can win the Euro's. It's laughable when Portugal is doing well and winning trophies they attribute it to Ronaldo heroic. But when they are playing poorly and unable to win the world cup they become a small team and it's now team efforts. I remember when Ronaldo and his Portugal team mates won the Euros in 2016, it became a one main show, it was the talk of the media mostly Ronaldo fans were fueling that Lionel Messi can't win international trophy. There were several talks on how Ronaldo single handedly won the trophy for his country.

Years later Argentina won the Copa America and the world cup and suddenly it now turned out that Portugal is not a big team and Ronaldo can't single handedly win the world cup for his country. It's really ironic, I wonder when the fact will be acknowledge that Ronaldo is over hyped and he is not as good as many thinks he is. All great players in history always win the world cup. So Ronaldo should try his best, do his magic and win the world cup with Portugal if he is to be considered among the greatest to have ever played the game. Portugal has the squad capable of winning the world cup, they are no small nation when it comes to international football.