USA TO SUBMIT BIDS TO HOST WORLD CUP IN '18 OR '22

[zexen_lowe]

okr said:

Oh, my European neighbours and their constant complaints about socc..., oops, football and USA. Always good for a laugh. It's funny how you care about a simple word.

No passion for soccer in USA? I bet most of you don't even know (or care) that USA is still one of the most succesful and most important countries when it comes to women's football/soccer. And the male US team isn't nearly as bad as many Europeans and South Americans might think.

You want "real" football passion in the stadiums? We'll get plenty of it in 2010/Sout Africa and 2014/Brazil.

I for one wouldn't mind at all if the 2018 or 2022 world cup goes to USA, but as I said before, I think Canada might have better chances if both countries submit their bids.

As Sepp Blatter already stated (and once I agree with him): If any of the designated hosts fail to organize the tournament (we all know South Africa had severe financial problems and there's still a chance even Brazil might get in trouble), USA will be the best backup country in the world and the only one that could handle a late and quick shift of such a huge event.

Nobody is asaying that the US does bad in football, everyone knows they're very succesful in women's football (they won the gold medal, right?) and in the last two WC they didn't do bad (they had an excellent 2002 WC and were eliminated in a very tight match against the to-be-finalist Germany in quarter-finals, anmd in 2006 they took part in the most difficult group and drew against the to-be-champion Italy in a match they deserved to win). But a team's success has nothing to do with passion (there are countries with bad teams and a lot of passion -I dunno, a lot of Central American and African teams-, and countries with good teams and no passion -Venezuela has improved a lot lately, but the country simply doesn't like football-).

I think that a WC should only be hosted in a country were it would be THE event, and all other activities (like other sports) have to take a backseat against the WC. For example, in the 2006 WC, even if we didn't host the WC, every Argentina match the city was completely paralyzed, every office and school put TVs so everyone could see the matches and nobody worked or studied for the two hours that took the match. The only thing the newspapers were talking was about the WC, and everywhere the only thing people talked was about the WC, as it should be, because the WC is the biggest sport event in the world along with the Olympics, I'm sure that in most participating countries it was the same. Do you think that if another WC would take part in the US, it would be the most important thing happening there, it would be the even that drew the most attention from the newspapers? I think not. That's no "WC atmosphere" for me