Monday 27 June 2011

World Cup worries show why England would have been good choice for 2018

Although hosting the World Cup is a dream that has long since died, England fans can nevertheless take a little bit of pleasure in the fact that FIFA is already having to worry about its decision to allow Brazil to host the 2014 competition (a bid similar to Qatar and Russia's in the sense that it involves a lot of work developing, making and remodelling stadiums) as it starts to consider what is going to happen should Brazil fail to have everything in place and the 2014 tournament schedule falls apart, something that could so easily happen given the scale of work that still needs to be completed. Those who bet football online will wonder if they can get things sorted.

With England already set up and ready to hold the tournament (within reason the country could host a competition on the scale of the World Cup with tomorrow as a start date), and with the international football community seemingly desperate to take more extreme risks in trying to pick up big bucks from new markets that it hasn't already conquered, the fact remains that it may take an almighty failure to steer FIFA (less its corrupt officials) back towards the traditional heartlands of football in Europe for future World Cups. Anyone looking at Euro 2012 betting odds should remember this.

Should this not happen, we may start to find that the next set of World Cup bids come from the likes of Iran and North Korea as FIFA look once again to take its tournament to markets that it doesn't yet dominate in and is looking to get onside. Whatever does happen in the long-term, English fans can at least take pleasure from the fact that FIFA are starting get a bit twitchy about their decisions.

Thursday 9 June 2011

England 2 Switzerland 2

The main story being how tired the England team were for this end of season match, obviously not boding well for the main tournements which typically take place at this time of year! For the record England were 0-2 down. England stay top of the group thogh as Montenegro drew with Hungary.