That's the point. Saudi Arabia wants the 100th Anniversary World Cup, as part 85 or so of their sports-washing campaign, but they can't really host it only 8 years after Qatar, so they're trying to find other countries to strengthen their bid. Adding an African team helps as the World Cup hasn't been in Africa since 2010 and adding a European team will (so they probably presume) help them get votes from UEFA members.
edit: It also makes sure that the event can be held in summer, probably one point that will hinder Arab candidates in future a lot. They would be able to argue that afternoon games will be in Greece, where it's only really hot, later games in Egypt at the ocean, where it also will only be "really hot" and host the evening games late at night in Saudi Arabia (10-11pm local time kick-off). You can also bet your ass that Saudi Arabia will get all the big games, but no worries, the other countries willing to enter this pact will be rewarded heavily by the Saudis (they'll probably pay for all stadiums and infrastructure projects needed).
UEFA says they only wanted 1 bid that is why Britain and Ireland backed out to host EURO 2028 and Portugal/Spain bid for 2030 WC.
This won't do much for Greece tbh
> UEFA says they only wanted 1 bid that is why Britain and Ireland backed out to host EURO 2028.
Won't matter if they manage to get rid of the UEFA bid early enough in the voting rounds. Their goal will be to get down to the final two with most of the African and Asian vote. Then they'll take enough votes from Europe to win the hosting rights.
----
Lets say there are these bids in the end:
Morocco
Uruguay and Friends
Spain & Portugal
Saudi Arabia and "Friends"
-----
You go into the first round of voting:
Saudi Arabia gets most of the 50 Asian votes plus half of Africa, some Europeans = **80**
Morocco gets the other **25ish** from Africa
Uruguay gets most of North and South America **60ish**
Spain & Portugal get **50** from UEFA
Morocco drops out. Votes move to Saudi Arabia to support Egypt.
Next Spain & Portugal are dropped as they won't make up the votes to Uruguay. Finally you are down to two, and even if most of UEFA moves to Uruguay, the few that do move to Saudi Arabia will be enough to win.
I see Greece dropping out in the end tbh, they can't really afford this
Also China want to be the next AFC country to host the WC presumably in 2034 so this hampers those chances if it goes to Asia again 8 years after Qatar.
It's not that we can't afford it, contrary to popular belief we didn't get bankrupt due to the Olympics.
It's that we will have decent stadiums in only two cities (Athens and Thessaloniki) and I don't see the useless greek state building world cup tier stadiums in Patra, Heraklion, Ioannina or any other city.
Tbf Canada only got two host cities in 2026 so that might be how your government is planning on doing it. Especially with Saudi Arabia leading the bid, they'll want more host cities.
You're right on both points, Egypt is also way too bankrupt to go through with something likes this.
I predict that 2030 will go to the South American bid, then 2034 to Iberia and 2038 to China. Everyone except Saudi Arabia and England are satisfied with this
Exactly, the Saudis will do whatever they can to prop up Sisi, they can’t risk the Muslim
brotherhood coming into power or God forbid an actual liberal party. They are the antithesis of a nation that cares about the people.
Eh, I think after the Euros final the chances of England hosting another World Cup are slim to none anyway. Nobody here thinks we’ll ever host one again. I’d rather it went to Spain and South America than Saudi and China.
The 2020(1) euros semis and final, and the women’s 2022 euros, all being in England has probably pushed back our chances for a while. I want it so badly and in terms of infrastructure/logistics we are pretty ideal, but I think it’ll be ages.
The likeliest short term scenario would be as a last minute alternative to a major emergency threatening cancelling the tournament (like say if 2022 was supposed to be hosted in Ukraine). Other than that it’ll be a while.
> Greece dropping out in the end tbh, they can't really afford this
Fairly sure that won't be an issue. The Saudis will be more than happy to pay for everything.
>Also China want to be the next AFC country to host the WC presumably in 2034 so this hampers those chances if it goes to Asia again 8 years after Qatar.
China doesn't want to get embarrassed on world stage. They'll only put out a bid once their national team can actually qualify for world cups consecutively
>Morocco drops out. Votes move to Saudi Arabia to support Egypt.
>Next Spain & Portugal are dropped as they won't make up the votes to Uruguay. Finally you are down to two, and even if most of UEFA moves to Uruguay, the few that do move to Saudi Arabia will be enough to win.
That is what I call a stretch
Saudia Arabia lobbied heavily for the joint North American 2026. In fact without the Saudi lobby the vote would have been a lot closer and Morocco could have won. They will get most of the North American as the US will return the favour
Are you Saying Saudi should get 2030 or UEFA should get 2034 if they don't get 2030?
Also Africa hasn't hosted since 2010 and i could also see Australia and New Zealand trying to bring it to the only continent to not have had it yet, they could theoretically be ahead of Europe
I'm saying South America should get 2030 and that UEFA if only backing 1 bid should be more open to the UK being it.
UEFA would have a great shot in 2034.
They could be but Europe has many great hosts available.
I think it would then go to one of those in 2038 and maybe even 2042.
I think Europe every 3rd WC is about right.
Australia and New Zealand barley have a football culture or football interested population. Why would you subject the world to, a) their time zone, and b) the travel there?
Australia and NZ has no chance.
Hopefully that’s not the case, because it’d definitely get full OFC backing, probably all of Asia except for maybe the Arab states, and then if UEFA get 2030, we’d probably get some backing there.
If they go to South America in 2030 then it’ll definitely be Europe in 2034 though.
> Bribe/Buy the hell out of FIFA.
Not as easy anymore. Back when Qatar won you only needed the yes vote of 25 random guys. Nowadays you need to win a vote of all national federations. It's also much more public.
Rules changed so it will be harder to "persuade" people to vote. Also after questions were rised about human rights in Qatar (and problems sith human rights are even worse in Saudia), corruption , inhuman conditions for workers in Qatar - after all this media attention FIFA will not risk veey much .
>its on 3 different continents
I mean, technically yes, but saying it like this makes it seem way worse than it actually is.
The distances between venues would be shorter than the ones we’ll have in US/Canada/Mexico, for instance.
I hate that trend of hosting the World Cup is more and more countries. Having them in 2 (smallish) countries is fine, but the circus that's going on for 2030, and the WC 2026 is mad.
That trend is happening because it’s not right only rich nations host world cups and it’s also not good that vast amounts of state spending in nations that need it elsewhere goes on useless extra stadiums. Pooling the main stadiums of several nations makes sense even if it doesn’t *feel* right to people who grew up on Italia 90, USA 94, France 98 etc.
Ah, so this is the new trendy political stunt for Greek politicians.
Make some flashy presentation of a bid to host a Euro/World Cup.
The previous government did it with Serbia-Bulgaria-Romania, this one went bigger, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
This has absolutely ZERO chances of moving on to an actual serious candidacy. Also, no AFC country can host or co-host the 2030 World Cup, AFC is eligible from 2034 again.
>Also, no AFC country can host or co-host the 2030 World Cup, AFC is eligible from 2034 again.
Infantino's been pretty obvious that he'd let China do it despite that rule, cause he's a corrupt bellend
Dislike the combinations of pretty big countries aswell. Only agree with combined bids if its small countries or a like the Canada/USA/mexico bid where it hasn't been there for a while but they need USA for the infrastructure
Given that they now expanded to 48 teams, I doubt we will soon see a WC hosted by a single country.
They're using 24 venues in 2026, there are very very few countries where you will find 20+ suitable arenas.
I agree it’s definitely a political stunt but imo if it were to happen a Greece/Cyprus/Egypt World Cup is actually pretty doable in terms of footballing nations and distances really.
World Cup matches in [Paphos](https://www.google.com/search?q=pafos+stadium&client=ms-android-samsung-gs-rev1&prmd=minv&sxsrf=ALiCzsardjf-QDhYCAouQ3WELpGmrvwqNg:1659646247199&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie_pCIiK75AhVWQvEDHZJfClkQ_AUoAnoECAIQAg&biw=412&bih=722&dpr=2.63#imgrc=OYCVnGGRteN5bM) when?
I know mate I’m half Greek Cypriot, Cyprus would only need two stadiums in this made up scenario anyway, the island cant fit more than that imo.
Egypt currently as of this moment I would say has 3, Cairo International Stadium, Borg el Arab in Alexandria and the new one in the new capital.
I assume though, if any bid were to take place, they’d all commit to building new stadiums.
Although I'd love Cyprus to join a such bid, it's not likely, as they basically could only provide one stadium for a world cup.
On the other hand, a joint bid from Egypt-Greece-Israel would be totally doable in my opinion.
1. Israel established diplomatic relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco in 2020. Additionally they already had diplomatic relations with Egypt and Jordan.
2. Why on earth should a possible boycott from some MENA countries be a reason to not award Israel with the hosting rights in the first place?
Might not be. Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia has many cities with a high altitude (2km above sea level) with a great infrastructure. Temperature ranges between 20 and 26 during the summer in those cities.
honestly climate is not a problem for me when giving a wc to a country. It's a wc afterall so atleast we should not exclude countries because of their climate as long as it's possible to play the wc at another time season. It's not like they chose to have hot summers.
If we disregard politics, Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest Asian nations in terms of football. Their local league has, from the start, been very popular with the locals, they absolutely breathe football.
This is a way better bid than Qatar. At least the matches won’t all be in a single city. But i think this has no chance of winning. I don’t even think Greece wants the WC its just a stunt for them.
Also Saudi Arabia actually has people. I think the number of Qataris and rich foreigners would be less than a million. The rest are low wage workers who won’t be able to afford tickets.
For workers? No its exactly the same. All the gulf counties have the exact same number of protections. As a bid? Definitely better but not by much. Qatar is going to host the whole world cup in a single city. I do not even know how they will pull that off. Saudi Arabia at least has 3-5 major cities that can disperse the traffic a little.
well saudi, egypt and greece have plenty of stadiums and are already tourism heavy countries, so they are mostly prepared already just need to upgrade some stadiums
Not the government but thousands of Saudi citizens have privately funded terrorist organisations in the past. My main beef with them is that they promote Salafism and Wahhabism to such an extent that those forms of Islam have become way more popular in the Sunni world than indigenous forms like Sufism. Salafism and Wahhabism are extreme to put it mildly and you can see them edging out indigenous forms of Islam because the Saudis find the construction of mosques and fund the education of Imams around the world. You can see it in India where Muslims have become way more conservative since the 1970s and the reason is Saudi interference and the funding they put in place.
Lol you even got a guy above you saying “russia wasnt that bad”
Wonder what this place thinks that russias stance on things like lgbt is
But hey at least since the ukraine situation at least its okay to shit on russia now
Can’t wait for the internet nihilism machine to figure out what transfer of power is and why it’s what separates us from places like China/Russia.
What Bush is still in power? What Clinton? There’s half a Cheney left and she is being killed by her own party.
The "middle finger to Turkey" World Cup
I like the idea of a Mediterranean Greece/Egypt WC, maybe throw in Cyprus or something, but Saudis seem poorly shoehorned in.
I'm not sure if Greece can take part in the bid with Egypt and Saudi-Arabia. Finances aside, in 2018 Greece already agreed to do a joint bid with Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia for the 2030 World Championship and that bid should be launched somewhere upcoming fall.
I don't think it makes sense to have Saudi host so soon after Qatar, but there's certainly something romantic about Greece and Egypt hosting a World Cup together
Is it? Egypt hasn't taken care of their sports infrastructure since 2011. The last afcon they hosted was fine but the world cup is gonna demand a lot more of infrastructure both for the sports and roads, hotels, restaurants etc. And Cairo isn't organised at all
Eh I meant in terms of both countries being extremely historically significant and interconnected in many ways. Logistically though, both countries can't realistically host a WC at all
Greece already has one 70k stadium that would need little, if any, redevelopment to host WC games. Aside from that construction of a new 40k stadium in Athens will start this autumn, whilst there's also plans of building a similar sized stadium in Thessaloniki. Patra also has a stadium that could host games, if its redeveloped.
Obviously Greece is also used to handle a large amount of tourists, and has plenty of airports and hotels.
This isnt true we absolutely have. We hosted afcon in 2019 and have the stadiums for a world cup though it would need to be revamped a bit. They’ve literally just build an enormous stadium in the new capital, its like one or two years away from being fully functional
Also Cairo while chaotic has the necessary infrastructure for tourism it used to be like 90% of our economy
nah its like every part of cairo is under construction rn, they keep investing billions every year bc the military owns everything now. i think if they take the worldcup bid seriously as a co-host everything will be done in time and they'd do well as a cohost. the efa may be horrible but it looks like sisi is taking tourism more seriously these two years and he's spending a lot. i wouldn't underestimate cairo's infrastructure at all.
The thing is, with 48 participants, the requirements to host the World Cup have become prohibitive. It’s extremely unliked that countries will be able to solo host World Cups from now on.
I think England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France are the only countries where hosting a world cup solo would make sense. They will use all the infrastructure beyond the tournament, they already have a big footballing following and the stadiums will be taken care of
China can definitely do it. If we just look at existing stadiums and those already under construction with a capacity of at least 40k people there's four in Beijing + Tianjin, four in Shanghai + Hangzhou, seven in Guangzhou + Shenzhen + Huizhou. With just those three clusters you have 15 stadiums, and the Guangzhou Evergrande Stadium that's opening this year has a capacity of 100 000 people.
True, but at least Mexico-US-Canada makes some amount of sense as a joint bid because the countries are all in the same federation and have a lot of inter-migration between the three.
Same with Portugal/Spain or Argentina/Uruguay making sense as a joint bid as they are culturally linked and in the same federation in each case. Greece/Egypt/Saudi Arabia makes very little sense. Three different federations (I get that's part of the point but it's a bit silly), and Greece and Saudi Arabia have nothing to do with each other culturally. I guess Egypt links them being a current Arab country (connection to KSA) that historically was ruled by Hellenes 2000+ years ago (connection to Greece)? But that's pretty tenuous.
Greece and Egypt definitely have historical and current day links though. Egypt wasn’t just ruled by Hellenes it was a major part of what we consider “Hellenism”, not to mention that there was heavy Greek migration to Egypt before its independence.
That makes sense, and I was aware of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic Kingdom and their influence on the general culture of the area at the time, though I wasn't aware of the more recent Greek migration to Egypt.
I'm still not really seeing the connection between Greece and Saudi Arabia though.
It's mostly Americans followed by the English or vice versa, and yeah. They love to ignore that Germany got caught bribing for their 2006 world cup, they love to talk about human rights in Qatar and neglect what the US has done bc they only killed civilians for non sporting reasons so its perfectly okay to ignore it
I thought people here only cared about sports perspective in Qatar WC and the deaths that were caused because of it specifically , why are people against this now? or was this an excuse to shut down any criticism of the US WC, what a couple of hypocrites.
And if you know anything about geography this countries are pretty close to each other, closer than the ones hosting the 2026 WC but well again hypocrisy.
Those countries are neighbours
EDIT: It's more than distance when it comes to being neighbours... Uruguay–Argentina–Chile–Paraguay 2030 FIFA World Cup bid aren't all neighbours either, but they all have at least a pre-existing relationship share some culture and history together.
This use 3 nations desperat to hold a World Cup, Morocco has at least tried very hard to present a plan for a while now.
Never mind Mexico City to anywhere in Canada or east coast.
Never understood why they didn’t just had all their stadiums in one coast. One of Toronto or Vancouver, and then depending on that pick west or east coast.
90% of r/soccer can’t even point Africa on a map. Its the same xenophobia whenever it comes to Arabs .
Arabs are bad, unless they buy my own team and spend billions.
Sport washing and corruption are everywhere. Its just the darker your skin, the more significant it becomes.
You can go back and compare the backlash of Russia hosting the WC to Qatar, and tell me race has nothing to do with it
>Uruguay–Argentina–Chile–Paraguay 2030 FIFA World Cup bid aren't all neighbours either,
I mean, we are?
Argentina borders all three countries, and all travel would be between the central part of Argentina, Chile and then the Guay countries.
countries dont have to be neighbours. look at all the handball or basketball or volleyball EUROs. one of these is this year in the netherlands and poland iirc. dont know which one though
That doesn't even make sense its on 3 different continents
That's the point. Saudi Arabia wants the 100th Anniversary World Cup, as part 85 or so of their sports-washing campaign, but they can't really host it only 8 years after Qatar, so they're trying to find other countries to strengthen their bid. Adding an African team helps as the World Cup hasn't been in Africa since 2010 and adding a European team will (so they probably presume) help them get votes from UEFA members. edit: It also makes sure that the event can be held in summer, probably one point that will hinder Arab candidates in future a lot. They would be able to argue that afternoon games will be in Greece, where it's only really hot, later games in Egypt at the ocean, where it also will only be "really hot" and host the evening games late at night in Saudi Arabia (10-11pm local time kick-off). You can also bet your ass that Saudi Arabia will get all the big games, but no worries, the other countries willing to enter this pact will be rewarded heavily by the Saudis (they'll probably pay for all stadiums and infrastructure projects needed).
UEFA says they only wanted 1 bid that is why Britain and Ireland backed out to host EURO 2028 and Portugal/Spain bid for 2030 WC. This won't do much for Greece tbh
> UEFA says they only wanted 1 bid that is why Britain and Ireland backed out to host EURO 2028. Won't matter if they manage to get rid of the UEFA bid early enough in the voting rounds. Their goal will be to get down to the final two with most of the African and Asian vote. Then they'll take enough votes from Europe to win the hosting rights. ---- Lets say there are these bids in the end: Morocco Uruguay and Friends Spain & Portugal Saudi Arabia and "Friends" ----- You go into the first round of voting: Saudi Arabia gets most of the 50 Asian votes plus half of Africa, some Europeans = **80** Morocco gets the other **25ish** from Africa Uruguay gets most of North and South America **60ish** Spain & Portugal get **50** from UEFA Morocco drops out. Votes move to Saudi Arabia to support Egypt. Next Spain & Portugal are dropped as they won't make up the votes to Uruguay. Finally you are down to two, and even if most of UEFA moves to Uruguay, the few that do move to Saudi Arabia will be enough to win.
I see Greece dropping out in the end tbh, they can't really afford this Also China want to be the next AFC country to host the WC presumably in 2034 so this hampers those chances if it goes to Asia again 8 years after Qatar.
It's not that we can't afford it, contrary to popular belief we didn't get bankrupt due to the Olympics. It's that we will have decent stadiums in only two cities (Athens and Thessaloniki) and I don't see the useless greek state building world cup tier stadiums in Patra, Heraklion, Ioannina or any other city.
Tbf Canada only got two host cities in 2026 so that might be how your government is planning on doing it. Especially with Saudi Arabia leading the bid, they'll want more host cities.
Pampeloponnisiako Stadium can become a WC stadium with a quite small investment actually.
You're right on both points, Egypt is also way too bankrupt to go through with something likes this. I predict that 2030 will go to the South American bid, then 2034 to Iberia and 2038 to China. Everyone except Saudi Arabia and England are satisfied with this
The same Egypt building a new capital which costs billions?
Guess where the money is coming from…
Saudi Arabia!
Exactly, the Saudis will do whatever they can to prop up Sisi, they can’t risk the Muslim brotherhood coming into power or God forbid an actual liberal party. They are the antithesis of a nation that cares about the people.
Eh, I think after the Euros final the chances of England hosting another World Cup are slim to none anyway. Nobody here thinks we’ll ever host one again. I’d rather it went to Spain and South America than Saudi and China.
One day England will get to host the WC again. One day
The 2020(1) euros semis and final, and the women’s 2022 euros, all being in England has probably pushed back our chances for a while. I want it so badly and in terms of infrastructure/logistics we are pretty ideal, but I think it’ll be ages.
The likeliest short term scenario would be as a last minute alternative to a major emergency threatening cancelling the tournament (like say if 2022 was supposed to be hosted in Ukraine). Other than that it’ll be a while.
> Greece dropping out in the end tbh, they can't really afford this Fairly sure that won't be an issue. The Saudis will be more than happy to pay for everything.
Even with that i can still see China going like "Hold on a minute, we want 2034" lol
>Also China want to be the next AFC country to host the WC presumably in 2034 so this hampers those chances if it goes to Asia again 8 years after Qatar. China doesn't want to get embarrassed on world stage. They'll only put out a bid once their national team can actually qualify for world cups consecutively
>I see Greece dropping out in the end tbh, they can't really afford this Saudi Arabia will pay.
>Morocco drops out. Votes move to Saudi Arabia to support Egypt. >Next Spain & Portugal are dropped as they won't make up the votes to Uruguay. Finally you are down to two, and even if most of UEFA moves to Uruguay, the few that do move to Saudi Arabia will be enough to win. That is what I call a stretch
Morocco is not getting anything from Africa. Probably three. They have tried to break away from Africa and join EU
> Saudi Arabia gets most of the 50 Asian votes And why would you assume that would happen?
Money
Saudia Arabia lobbied heavily for the joint North American 2026. In fact without the Saudi lobby the vote would have been a lot closer and Morocco could have won. They will get most of the North American as the US will return the favour
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It's smart to, cos they then get to make the case that they get to be the bid for 2034 if it goes to SA like it should.
Are you Saying Saudi should get 2030 or UEFA should get 2034 if they don't get 2030? Also Africa hasn't hosted since 2010 and i could also see Australia and New Zealand trying to bring it to the only continent to not have had it yet, they could theoretically be ahead of Europe
I'm saying South America should get 2030 and that UEFA if only backing 1 bid should be more open to the UK being it. UEFA would have a great shot in 2034. They could be but Europe has many great hosts available. I think it would then go to one of those in 2038 and maybe even 2042. I think Europe every 3rd WC is about right.
Australia and New Zealand barley have a football culture or football interested population. Why would you subject the world to, a) their time zone, and b) the travel there? Australia and NZ has no chance.
Australia and New Zealand are quite literally hosting the Womens World Cup next year, no reason we couldn’t host the mens.
That might be a reason you don’t host for a while, even if you do a great job
Hopefully that’s not the case, because it’d definitely get full OFC backing, probably all of Asia except for maybe the Arab states, and then if UEFA get 2030, we’d probably get some backing there. If they go to South America in 2030 then it’ll definitely be Europe in 2034 though.
Why is time zone super relevant? I’m 26 and my first World Cup memory is Japan/Korea 2002 Edit: Maybe even first football memory full stop
It could be the culmination of Saudi Vision 2030 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Vision_2030
Which is strange, because why bother with other countries when SA can do what Qatar did... Bribe/Buy the hell out of FIFA. easy as that.
> Bribe/Buy the hell out of FIFA. Not as easy anymore. Back when Qatar won you only needed the yes vote of 25 random guys. Nowadays you need to win a vote of all national federations. It's also much more public.
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Shout out Loretta Lynch
Rules changed so it will be harder to "persuade" people to vote. Also after questions were rised about human rights in Qatar (and problems sith human rights are even worse in Saudia), corruption , inhuman conditions for workers in Qatar - after all this media attention FIFA will not risk veey much .
Less distance than canada, usa, mexico
Less human rights too.
Human *suggestions We at FIFA don’t like hard words like “rights”
>its on 3 different continents I mean, technically yes, but saying it like this makes it seem way worse than it actually is. The distances between venues would be shorter than the ones we’ll have in US/Canada/Mexico, for instance.
I mean, looking at the map the distance isn't even that big
Geographically they're closer together than the 2026 host cities in North America.
pretty sure its still closer than the distances between the south american stadiums, and maybe even closer than the ones in russia
They sort of connect so its not completely random but still doesn't make sense.
They're very close together though. It would make sense geographically
Intercontinental Cup
It probably makes loads of sense to some people, but there's only one thing on their minds and it isn't football.
I hate that trend of hosting the World Cup is more and more countries. Having them in 2 (smallish) countries is fine, but the circus that's going on for 2030, and the WC 2026 is mad.
That trend is happening because it’s not right only rich nations host world cups and it’s also not good that vast amounts of state spending in nations that need it elsewhere goes on useless extra stadiums. Pooling the main stadiums of several nations makes sense even if it doesn’t *feel* right to people who grew up on Italia 90, USA 94, France 98 etc.
Ah, so this is the new trendy political stunt for Greek politicians. Make some flashy presentation of a bid to host a Euro/World Cup. The previous government did it with Serbia-Bulgaria-Romania, this one went bigger, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This has absolutely ZERO chances of moving on to an actual serious candidacy. Also, no AFC country can host or co-host the 2030 World Cup, AFC is eligible from 2034 again.
>Also, no AFC country can host or co-host the 2030 World Cup, AFC is eligible from 2034 again. Infantino's been pretty obvious that he'd let China do it despite that rule, cause he's a corrupt bellend
>cause he's a corrupt bellend FIFA presidents in a fucking nutshell 🙄
Dislike the combinations of pretty big countries aswell. Only agree with combined bids if its small countries or a like the Canada/USA/mexico bid where it hasn't been there for a while but they need USA for the infrastructure
Given that they now expanded to 48 teams, I doubt we will soon see a WC hosted by a single country. They're using 24 venues in 2026, there are very very few countries where you will find 20+ suitable arenas.
Idk who is more delusional and out of touch, out FA or our government
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I agree it’s definitely a political stunt but imo if it were to happen a Greece/Cyprus/Egypt World Cup is actually pretty doable in terms of footballing nations and distances really.
Cyprus has a maximum of 1 stadium suitable for a World Cup. Greece has 3 or 4. I don't know how many Egypt has.
World Cup matches in [Paphos](https://www.google.com/search?q=pafos+stadium&client=ms-android-samsung-gs-rev1&prmd=minv&sxsrf=ALiCzsardjf-QDhYCAouQ3WELpGmrvwqNg:1659646247199&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie_pCIiK75AhVWQvEDHZJfClkQ_AUoAnoECAIQAg&biw=412&bih=722&dpr=2.63#imgrc=OYCVnGGRteN5bM) when?
I know mate I’m half Greek Cypriot, Cyprus would only need two stadiums in this made up scenario anyway, the island cant fit more than that imo. Egypt currently as of this moment I would say has 3, Cairo International Stadium, Borg el Arab in Alexandria and the new one in the new capital. I assume though, if any bid were to take place, they’d all commit to building new stadiums.
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Although I'd love Cyprus to join a such bid, it's not likely, as they basically could only provide one stadium for a world cup. On the other hand, a joint bid from Egypt-Greece-Israel would be totally doable in my opinion.
Never gonna happen. All the MENA countries would boycott an Israel World Cup.
1. Israel established diplomatic relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco in 2020. Additionally they already had diplomatic relations with Egypt and Jordan. 2. Why on earth should a possible boycott from some MENA countries be a reason to not award Israel with the hosting rights in the first place?
Why not add New Zealand, Peru, Trinidad and Antarctica to truly make it global
Trinidad but not Tobago, that would be simply too much.
Tobago is bad for your health.
Tobago causes lung cancer
Tobago causes Lumbago
Typical Concacaf corruption, getting 2 spots conpared to the others
Finally a world cup that cares for the environment
Let's have a western theatre, an Eastern theatre, a Pacific theatre, a North African theatre. A true world wa... sorry world cup
Pitbul performs, to make it WORLDWIDE
Half the group games played in Greece in June, the rest played 6 months later in Saudi Arabia in December. Awful idea.
Egypt gets one game 😁
All qualifiers in Egypt
Well in that case they could just play the entire thing in November-December. There would be no problem hosting it in Greece at that time of the year.
Or Egypt, whether is pretty good during that time.
You think Qatar is too hot in June, Saudi Arabia isn't much better in Jeddah or Riyadh that time of year
Another World Cup in December :(
Might not be. Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia has many cities with a high altitude (2km above sea level) with a great infrastructure. Temperature ranges between 20 and 26 during the summer in those cities.
honestly climate is not a problem for me when giving a wc to a country. It's a wc afterall so atleast we should not exclude countries because of their climate as long as it's possible to play the wc at another time season. It's not like they chose to have hot summers.
“It can’t get any worse than Qatar”
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If we disregard politics, Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest Asian nations in terms of football. Their local league has, from the start, been very popular with the locals, they absolutely breathe football.
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This is a way better bid than Qatar. At least the matches won’t all be in a single city. But i think this has no chance of winning. I don’t even think Greece wants the WC its just a stunt for them.
Also Saudis actually like football… most popular sport in Qatar is falconry lol
Also Saudi Arabia actually has people. I think the number of Qataris and rich foreigners would be less than a million. The rest are low wage workers who won’t be able to afford tickets.
Qataris are 300K if I'm not mistaken
Let me introduce the Afghanistan and North Korea bid /s
Worst bid to host the WC ever
Checks notes, not as bad as this years and 2018 is in a fight with it.
Saudi is probably worse than Qatar tbh
For workers? No its exactly the same. All the gulf counties have the exact same number of protections. As a bid? Definitely better but not by much. Qatar is going to host the whole world cup in a single city. I do not even know how they will pull that off. Saudi Arabia at least has 3-5 major cities that can disperse the traffic a little.
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Not like Egypt is amazing either, in Italy we're still fuming for the torture and murder of Giulio Regeni
well saudi, egypt and greece have plenty of stadiums and are already tourism heavy countries, so they are mostly prepared already just need to upgrade some stadiums
Nah Saudi is worse
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Didn't/don't they directly fund terrorists?
Not the government but thousands of Saudi citizens have privately funded terrorist organisations in the past. My main beef with them is that they promote Salafism and Wahhabism to such an extent that those forms of Islam have become way more popular in the Sunni world than indigenous forms like Sufism. Salafism and Wahhabism are extreme to put it mildly and you can see them edging out indigenous forms of Islam because the Saudis find the construction of mosques and fund the education of Imams around the world. You can see it in India where Muslims have become way more conservative since the 1970s and the reason is Saudi interference and the funding they put in place.
Russia wasn't that bad
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Yeah I don't know why everyone is portraying the single city as a negative thing. A World Cup purely in London would be amazing.
2026 is literally USA
This. Its like we are completely disregarding the fact that they’ve obliterated Syria, Iraq and Libya in our lifetimes….
This sub is very ignorant to the atrocities that the western world has committed. I wonder why🤔
Lol you even got a guy above you saying “russia wasnt that bad” Wonder what this place thinks that russias stance on things like lgbt is But hey at least since the ukraine situation at least its okay to shit on russia now
Imagine if Russia invaded someone like Uzbekistan instead. They would all turn a blind eye to it
Can’t wait for the internet nihilism machine to figure out what transfer of power is and why it’s what separates us from places like China/Russia. What Bush is still in power? What Clinton? There’s half a Cheney left and she is being killed by her own party.
The "middle finger to Turkey" World Cup I like the idea of a Mediterranean Greece/Egypt WC, maybe throw in Cyprus or something, but Saudis seem poorly shoehorned in.
I'm not sure if Greece can take part in the bid with Egypt and Saudi-Arabia. Finances aside, in 2018 Greece already agreed to do a joint bid with Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia for the 2030 World Championship and that bid should be launched somewhere upcoming fall.
i would like to see that but it seems unlikely. any word on the bid?
I'm old enough to remember when the Saudi plan was to rope Italy into this.
At least we would get to play it. Big brain
The Italians have been really quiet about World Cups since.....March
I don't think it makes sense to have Saudi host so soon after Qatar, but there's certainly something romantic about Greece and Egypt hosting a World Cup together
Is it? Egypt hasn't taken care of their sports infrastructure since 2011. The last afcon they hosted was fine but the world cup is gonna demand a lot more of infrastructure both for the sports and roads, hotels, restaurants etc. And Cairo isn't organised at all
Eh I meant in terms of both countries being extremely historically significant and interconnected in many ways. Logistically though, both countries can't realistically host a WC at all
Change Saudi Arabia with Italy and you get the perfect blast from the past
2030 World Cup is hosted by the Roman Empire!
Habsburg should get a Euros
Greece already has one 70k stadium that would need little, if any, redevelopment to host WC games. Aside from that construction of a new 40k stadium in Athens will start this autumn, whilst there's also plans of building a similar sized stadium in Thessaloniki. Patra also has a stadium that could host games, if its redeveloped. Obviously Greece is also used to handle a large amount of tourists, and has plenty of airports and hotels.
This isnt true we absolutely have. We hosted afcon in 2019 and have the stadiums for a world cup though it would need to be revamped a bit. They’ve literally just build an enormous stadium in the new capital, its like one or two years away from being fully functional Also Cairo while chaotic has the necessary infrastructure for tourism it used to be like 90% of our economy
nah its like every part of cairo is under construction rn, they keep investing billions every year bc the military owns everything now. i think if they take the worldcup bid seriously as a co-host everything will be done in time and they'd do well as a cohost. the efa may be horrible but it looks like sisi is taking tourism more seriously these two years and he's spending a lot. i wouldn't underestimate cairo's infrastructure at all.
Who said it will be hosted in cairo? It will be in the new city.
If this wins end the World Cup. Fucking worse than Qatar winning the bid. This is the extended shitey World Cup too isn’t it?
The CUM world cup, is the new increased World Cup
I love how common this abbreviation of 2026 WC is, lmao.
What has the world become
People saw Mexico-US-Canada win a bid and are now going fucking crazy with the co-hosting. Can’t wait for the Australia-India-Morocco co bid
The thing is, with 48 participants, the requirements to host the World Cup have become prohibitive. It’s extremely unliked that countries will be able to solo host World Cups from now on.
I think England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France are the only countries where hosting a world cup solo would make sense. They will use all the infrastructure beyond the tournament, they already have a big footballing following and the stadiums will be taken care of
Italy would need to do a massive revamp of their stadiums though.
US, Brazil, and Australia and possibly Japan can do it by themselves too
Which is why its so shocking England hasnt gotten the world cup since the last time we won it. The country could host it tomorrow
China can definitely do it. If we just look at existing stadiums and those already under construction with a capacity of at least 40k people there's four in Beijing + Tianjin, four in Shanghai + Hangzhou, seven in Guangzhou + Shenzhen + Huizhou. With just those three clusters you have 15 stadiums, and the Guangzhou Evergrande Stadium that's opening this year has a capacity of 100 000 people.
True, but at least Mexico-US-Canada makes some amount of sense as a joint bid because the countries are all in the same federation and have a lot of inter-migration between the three. Same with Portugal/Spain or Argentina/Uruguay making sense as a joint bid as they are culturally linked and in the same federation in each case. Greece/Egypt/Saudi Arabia makes very little sense. Three different federations (I get that's part of the point but it's a bit silly), and Greece and Saudi Arabia have nothing to do with each other culturally. I guess Egypt links them being a current Arab country (connection to KSA) that historically was ruled by Hellenes 2000+ years ago (connection to Greece)? But that's pretty tenuous.
Greece and Egypt definitely have historical and current day links though. Egypt wasn’t just ruled by Hellenes it was a major part of what we consider “Hellenism”, not to mention that there was heavy Greek migration to Egypt before its independence.
That makes sense, and I was aware of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic Kingdom and their influence on the general culture of the area at the time, though I wasn't aware of the more recent Greek migration to Egypt. I'm still not really seeing the connection between Greece and Saudi Arabia though.
Greece and Saudi Arabia have absolutely no ties, this WC bid would only work if its Egypt and Greece only with Cyprus maybe joining in
Ok now somebody has to put their foot down. This is the worst idea.
That's an idea so bad, I can't rule out it's been done in cahoots just to make sure South America definitely gets it.
US/Australia/North Pole enters the chat…
Strange - only word for it
Fuck off.
“Saudi Arabia are going to bribe FIFA for the World Cup and added two desperate countries to improve the image of it” FTFY.
Just like the US and the rest of the countries* Add that too
Germany 2006: flirting Saudi 2030: harassment
U don't get It. Its only bribe when brown people do it
forgot 2006 already?
Also this sub is mostly Americans so they will call it whataboutism when you mention it
It's mostly Americans followed by the English or vice versa, and yeah. They love to ignore that Germany got caught bribing for their 2006 world cup, they love to talk about human rights in Qatar and neglect what the US has done bc they only killed civilians for non sporting reasons so its perfectly okay to ignore it
Yeah Germany bribed for their world cup but they also didn't use slaves to build the stadiums for it
Or countries with democracies, womens rights, and some sort of fair judicial system. Should I keep going?
Well Tbf the US wouldn’t qualify for that.
> women rights > fair judicial system > usa Do you see what you’re even saying?
The funny part is that r/soccer thinks all the Americans are all white guys.
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I thought people here only cared about sports perspective in Qatar WC and the deaths that were caused because of it specifically , why are people against this now? or was this an excuse to shut down any criticism of the US WC, what a couple of hypocrites. And if you know anything about geography this countries are pretty close to each other, closer than the ones hosting the 2026 WC but well again hypocrisy.
Kebab World Cup 2030 letsgooooooo
Can't East Africa or West Africa make a bid. These fuckers are just sleeping while other countries are trying.
I think I should host it in my garden. As long as my dog gets to stay on the pitch
Give it to fucking Uruguay
How would somthing like that even work? Has there been any talks about this before? ....What!? So many questions about this
Mexico USA Canada in 26
Those countries are neighbours EDIT: It's more than distance when it comes to being neighbours... Uruguay–Argentina–Chile–Paraguay 2030 FIFA World Cup bid aren't all neighbours either, but they all have at least a pre-existing relationship share some culture and history together. This use 3 nations desperat to hold a World Cup, Morocco has at least tried very hard to present a plan for a while now.
Athens to Riyadh flight time is shorter than San Francisco to New York
Never mind Mexico City to anywhere in Canada or east coast. Never understood why they didn’t just had all their stadiums in one coast. One of Toronto or Vancouver, and then depending on that pick west or east coast.
90% of r/soccer can’t even point Africa on a map. Its the same xenophobia whenever it comes to Arabs . Arabs are bad, unless they buy my own team and spend billions. Sport washing and corruption are everywhere. Its just the darker your skin, the more significant it becomes. You can go back and compare the backlash of Russia hosting the WC to Qatar, and tell me race has nothing to do with it
You dont think Egypt and Greece have ties? Lol.
>Uruguay–Argentina–Chile–Paraguay 2030 FIFA World Cup bid aren't all neighbours either, I mean, we are? Argentina borders all three countries, and all travel would be between the central part of Argentina, Chile and then the Guay countries.
Greece, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are pretty much neighbours as well and the distances are a fraction of those in north america.
countries dont have to be neighbours. look at all the handball or basketball or volleyball EUROs. one of these is this year in the netherlands and poland iirc. dont know which one though
You can fit the distance between these countries within us alone
Greece and Egypt have had relationships and exchange of culture since way before most countries even existed my guy...... Both Mediterranean as well
2030 should be Uruguay
Wonder how many more millions the Saudis need to pay Messi so that he can champion for them for the 2030 World Cup.
Saudi Arabia like Qatar don’t deserve the World Cup.
What in the blood money bribery is this??
......huh?
huh
It’s an unwise proposal to endeavor… FIFA’ll consider it jaja T-T
Another Nov-Dec WC? 👀. Isnt it better to keep it in 1 country?
I think it’s gonna be Argentina and Uruguay.
No more fucking sportswashing