FIFA

The Northern Irish FA Seeks "Urgent" meeting with FIFA over fine for poppies

https://t.co/tqhycrCt0z

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has said that there is "overwhelming support" for an expanded world Cup to possibly 48 teams to which the European clubs Association has opposed if expansion is to take place it would not come in much before 2026 I do not think it could work as surely you would have to shorten domestic seasons in World Cup Years to make it feasible and also to allow national squads to prepare properly and would probably consist of 16 groups of three teams with the top two teams qualifying for knockout stage

Decision on the above proposal is expected in January

****BREAKING NEWS*****
FIFA Council has unaminously voted to expand the World Cup to 48 teams from 2026
to me this flies in the face of tradition and smells more like a FIFA money making scheme than anything, even though I would be happy to see more nations taking part but I think there would be very few nations who could budget reasonably sensibly to cater for it Now we have to wait and see how the place reallocation works for such a sizeable tournament any confederation that would gain for any reallocation has to be Africa and I certainly would think UEFA would lose at least two places. Not only that groups increase to 16 groups of three and bottom team eliminated after two games.

Laughed at terry butcher on Vic debryshire show about it had a scottish fan on and he says just because there will be 16 teams from europe still doesnt mean that scotland will qualify

Probably might be the only ever chance of all four home nations qualifying all together though, but I think what is the point of expanding the competition? I think will make qualifying for some teams meaningless and I reckon there will be too many one sided games in 2026 plus how many nations could actually stage the competition of that size successfully and financially successfully too?
Infantino has gone on record saying that the decision was made based on sporting 'merit' and was not about making money - bulls**t! we all know how much profit FIFA could gain from the expanded competition already!!
I would not be surprised if more places are allocated to African teams and Asian teams at the expense of Europe
and I hope more European leagues threaten to sue FIFA if La Liga go through with their threat as they say they were not properly consulted - I had read reports that the Bundesliga didn't like it but voted for it

Having read all about the sponsorship problems FIFA are having with next year's world Cup in Russia it's not surprising that they are having problems when you consider that they have $700m loss in their bank balance and another backhander scandal looming I would think they will next have problems not only selling tickets but also stadiums I wonder how they can now not justify moving both 2018 & 2022 when they had the opportunity I think if Russia does end up being a flop tournament I think Qatar will be even worse and they would have to expect big things in 2026

If the reports that are suggesting that several countries in the Middle East are severing diplomatic ties with Qatar (based on allegations linking Qatari support for Islamist extremism) are true, then should FIFA be now looking at moving the 2022 World Cup to either England or South Africa or even Australia?

I doubt if FIFA will even review the position of the 2022 World Cup after it is alleged that Bild will (or have) published the Garcia report in in full

Did Ifantino dismiss Garcia's report?

It now appears to come to light that Qatar made secret World Cup payments to FIFA which have a total of nearly $!bn

Leaked documents have revealed the state of Qatar made a $400m offer to FIFA three weeks before world football's governing body controversially decided that they would host the 2022 World Cup.

An exclusive investigation from The Sunday Times unearthed files that showed high-ranking officials from the Qatari state-run broadcaster Al Jazeera signed a television deal making the mega-money offer.
The TV company agreed to pay a fee of $100m into a designated FIFA account providing Qatar were successful in the World Cup ballot in 2010.

FIFA's rules state that no bidding countries can offer financial benefits to the governing body in connection to the vote.
However, Sepp Blatter, then FIFA president at the time, and his secretary general Jerome Valcke, completed the deal by signing it just a week after Qatar had won the right to host the 2022 tournament.

On Saturday night, the chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, Damian Collins told the Sunday Times that FIFA must freeze the Al Jazeera payments and launch an investigation into the contract that 'appears to be in clear breach of the rules'.

The Sunday Times have also revealed that a second TV rights contract worth $480m was offered to FIFA by beIN Media, the Al Jazeera's spin-off, three years after they won the bid amid Qatar's fears they would be stripped of hosting the World Cup.
It means that FIFA were directly offered close to $1bn in total by the Qatari state.

IMHO, to me if this is the case, it does now show how deeply rigged and corrupted that 2010 ballot was if this was going on.