World Cup Co-hosting Discouraged
Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg want to submit a joint bit for the 2018 World Cup. Do they really plan hosts that far in advance?
The three countries are preparing to submit a bid in January to host the tournament.
In 2010, South Africa gets it. In 2014, some country in South America will host it. That means it will be Europe’s turn in 2018.
Problem is, FIFA learned a valuable lesson in the 2002 Japan and South Korea co-hosted World Cup. The lesson learned – discourage the idea of co-hosts again.
All of us in Asia, thought it was stupid for FIFA to ask South Korea and Japan to co-host the thing. Simply because they are two completely different countries, two countries with a history, and two countries with some serious bad blood.
The average American thinks that Japan, Korea, and China are all one big blob of country that speaks the same language, had the same culture. Apparently FIFA thought so, too.
Well, just because they were stupid enough to think so some ten years ago when deciding on South Korea and Japan, doesn’t mean they have to be so stupid 12 years from now.
Perhaps FIFA needs some serious study on World History when making such decisions about the World Cup in the future….and not just make blanket decisions.
What do you think?
The ductch and the belgians co-hosted the EURO 2000. I think it went really well. I do agree that it would been best if were in a single country, but if co-hosting occures, it has to be in Europe. Situations are lot different comapared to Korea+Japan. Also, there are actually a football culture in Europe, an excellent one. You can see that from Germany case. There were no football culture in Korea+Japan.
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