Ever since the Donald Trump administration started ordering immigration officers to abduct people who don’t look like Donald Trump and the Supreme Court said “cool, cool,” questions have been raised about how it was going to work for the U.S. to co-host the men’s soccer World Cup this summer. With U.S. travel bans in place against several nations that made the tournament, on top of the risk fans from other countries would face of being grabbed by death squads and thrown into a waiting van, there was talk that maybe even FIFA would have second thoughts about the propriety of holding a major international sporting event in the U.S. — though also, you know, FIFA.
Now that the death squads are getting more deathy, though, the talk has suddenly grown louder:
A few caveats here: The “German soccer official” is the president of the German soccer club St. Pauli, which is famously activist and may not represent the rest of the nation’s soccer hierarchy. Blatter, formerly the face of FIFA, was ousted in disgrace in 2015 and has been vocal in criticizing the organization he once headed ever since. The UK bill to demand that the World Cup be moved out of the U.S. only has 26 sponsors out of 650 members of parliament, and in any case wouldn’t be binding on FIFA.
And yet! Headlines like “Calls for a Boycott of the World Cup Grow” were not what either the U.S. or FIFA anticipated when the 2026 World Cup was assigned to a combined bid from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and the possibility of tons of fans being either prevented from attending, too frightened to go to the U.S., or pissed off enough at Trump to stay home in protest has to have FIFA officials at least having second thoughts. And there’s a relatively easy fallback option: U.S. World Cup matches could be shifted to the other two host countries, though Canada and Mexico would have trouble selling tickets for quite as exorbitant prices as the U.S. would. Shifting games out of the U.S. has to still be considered unlikely, but it’s also the kind of thing where support for a boycott could snowball quickly, once enough Sepp Blatters start saying it out loud.
And why are we talking about this here at Field of Schemes? Only because getting to host major events like the World Cup is often held out as a carrot for public funding of new or renovated stadiums, and even if that’s wildly overblown to start with — how many World Cups or Olympics or even Super Bowls is one stadium likely to host in its expected 30-years-or-less lifetime? — the promised benefits start deflating if your prize event turns into an international embarrassment. Defenders of Olympics in particular counter reports showing that host cities almost always lose money hand over fist by arguing that you can’t put a price on the value of your city appearing on the world stage, but for every Barcelona Olympics that shows the world how awesome Catalonia is (albeit at the risk of then being besieged by too many tourists), there’s a Rio de Janeiro where most of the world ends up concluding “LOLBrazil.” The U.S. may yet escape being clowned internationally this summer — Fox Sports can be counted on not to mention it on air, certainly — but it’s yet another cautionary tale about the risks of putting too many eggs in the “this will bring tourism!” basket.
YES! Remove it from the U.S. until the Caucasians address their racism and prejudice sickness. Their delusional superiority complex thinking they’re better than any other peoples on earth has to start having major consequences. Take awash their money and their pride will follow!
In case you didn’t notice, FIFA’s president is a big Donald fanboy and even gave him a participation trophy Peace Prize to boost his ego.
So yeah, there could be Tianenmen Square-style -massacres all across the US and FIFA would just shrug it off.
The boycott question is a different matter, but it’s hard to imagine something the US could do that would generate that much anger and outrage among a sufficient number of participating nations.
Or at least, it used to be hard to imagine. Invading Greenland would probably do the trick.
Yeah, I similarly would have said a month ago that this was a non-starter. But if, say, Spain and Norway tell FIFA that they’re not showing up if they have to play in the U.S., things start to get interesting.
2018 World Cup was in Russia. 2022 was in Qatar. 2034 is in Saudi Arabia. No country is going to boycott the U.S.
Even if ‘some’ countries wanted to boycott any of those nation’s World Cups, their FIFA reps would advise them strongly not to if they ever wanted to participate in anything FIFA run again.
Plenty of players have not been happy about the chosen host nations in the past. I don’t recall too many refusing to participate when it came down to crunch time.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia want to rebrand themselves to the world, so whatever human rights violations they commit against their residents, they weren’t going to do anything to tourists. Like how Qatar had alcohol friendly zones even though it’s illegal other than at hotels
JS must not have heard of 1978 in Argentina, where the military dictatorship had leftists and dissidents thrown out of airplanes into the sea.
Or for that matter 1934 in Italy glorifying Benito Mussolini.
I think it unlikely that there will be a nations or player boycott of the US World Cup. The penalties FIFA imposes on people who show conscience of any kind tend to be horrendous.
It will be interesting to see what numbers travelling fans arrive in, however. It likely won’t affect in stadium attendance as I am pretty sure there are enough American fans to fill the seats anyway (or fans from other countries who are legal residents… not that the Federal Death Squads are too concerned about checking people’s papers before they exterminate them). However, it may well affect the overall economic impact for the host nation(s).
I won’t be watching anyway. The level of corruption in FIFA and the IOC (not to mention host nations for their events) is now so great I cannot watch the sports they claim to promote.
The challenge, of course, is finding any entertainment option in this day and age in which the corruption and carpetbagging is kept to a tolerable level. I’ve already given up on it being eliminated.
Canada and Mexico don’t have as many big stadiums as the US. The largest Canadian stadiums are BC Place at 54K (already slated for use) and Commonwealth in Edmonthon at 56K. Montreal’s Olympic Stadium is undergoing a renovation, which knocks it out of consideration. 10 US stadiums are being used for the World Cup between 65,000-82,500. There, there is AT&T in Dallas with 94K. Mexico has Azteca at 81K (already being used) and Olympico at 69K. So I don’t think they can really pull off moving the games at this late date unless they are resigned to such a big drop in attendance that the fewer tickets available won’t matter
They don’t need to split the World Cup among 16 venues, though — they’re just doing that to spread the games around. Qatar only had eight stadiums; I know there are more teams now, but still it wouldn’t be that hard to play matches more often at the existing stadiums.
I still don’t think it’s likely, but it would be way easier than gearing up an entirely new nation in a matter of five months.
You would have to move all the matches from Sofi, Levis, NRG, Arrowhead, Atlanta, and New York to Azteca stadium in Mexico City and all the matches from Philly, Seattle, Boston, and Miami to Estadio Olímpico Universitario to avoid losing seating capacity. No one has the capacity that Dallas has so you would lose seats there.
So if they are ok with having 2 matches on the same day at the two stadiums in Mexico City then I guess it can be done.
As Neil said, FIFA could easily shift all of the games to Canada and Mexico if they really wanted to.
FIFA won’t do that because FIFA kowtows to autocrats and to sponsors who have paid FIFA tons of money on the assumption that most of the World Cup games will be played in the US with all of its consumers and their disposable incomes. But they could.
Send all the illegal aliens to Mexico!!!They will fit right in with all the drug lords, murderers, rapists and corrupt filth that permit that land. They will be happier and that is the most important thing. :)
Initially, I was going to suggest Martha’s Vineyard but then I realized Barry Soetero didn’t care enough to let them stay the first time. The citizens demanded they be exported. It’s a shame because tjey would have been safe and snug on that island. :)
Wrong channel?
Please take this bullshit elsewhere.
Jokes are about fun. I read some jokes in posts prior to mine and figured I would chime in. Learn to laugh at yourself :) and make a joke.
You will feel better. I deep down you are a really kind and extremely fun person who likes jokes. I want your day to be blessed. Please accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. :) ……..On another note, looking forward to the fake feasibility Econ impact study that the Tampa Council is requesting for the Rays.
“Send all the illegal aliens to Mexico” must be the kind of “fun” with which I (and Jesus Christ, for that matter) am unfamiliar.
None of this quite violates the “no personal attack” rules here — though there are likely undocumented people reading this, so I did consider it — but please keep your hateful jokes to yourself in the future and stick to the topic at hand. (Rays impact study post coming a bit later this morning, btw.)
Thank you Neil. I saw the hateful jokes above
my posts and assumed it was okay to make some jokes
as well. May Jesus Christ Bless you as his Lord and Savior. Happy days you Amigo! :) and…….Go Rays and the new
Charlatans in charge of taxpayer milking!
It is a personal attack on Jesus Christ and the values espoused in the Gospels- use that loophole.
Jesus Christ hardly ever comments here anymore.
Wait, you said what?
They’re renovating Olympic Stadium in Montreal? For what at what cost? Did they pay it off yet from the 1976 Olympics?
For no apparent reason other than that it’s supposedly impossible to tear down, or at the very least, would cost more to tear down than it would to fix it up. Somehow, they came up with a figure of $2 billion to tear down. No one believes that, but it’s been said a lot, so people just accept it. Since the metro (subway) is below it, they can’t implode it. So it would have to be deconstructed which supposedly would be difficult because it was built using prestressed concrete reinforced with high-tension steel cables, so they would have to be taken apart very carefully. That’s the official reason. I am not an engineer, so I don’t know if any of that is true, but nothing I have seen justifies that number. However it makes the $870 million new roof look a bargain by comparison.
As far as what it’s going to be used for, no one knows. Sometimes the MLS team will play there if the weather is bad, which might happen since they are flipping the schedule. It could be used for the occasional Taylor Swift concert or other events. If Montreal gets an MLB team, maybe it will be a temporary home (no way it hosts a team full-time). So basically no one knows. However, it’s been a part of the city skyline for so there’s that
Yes, it was paid off in Dec 2006 IIRC. A little north of $1Bn in total cost (not including any upgrades since then, naturally).
The idea behind the new roof is it will make the stadium more useful…. but no-one believes it will even be useful enough to pay off it’s last ($150m) roof, much less the new one.
The OIB in Montreal is a law unto itself.
Part of the reason for the high cost of the new roof is that they are making significant changes to the ‘fixed’ roof to accommodate it. If you are interested you can see some of the work here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCL8gIWPYkg
It is true it would have to be disassembled rather than demolished more traditionally (as Aqib says). I don’t know that I believe the cost quoted either, but I don’t have a good answer/estimate/guess of what it actually would cost to do. And then you have to build something over the metro terminal anyway, so it’s not like the site becomes open/available for whatever redevelopment takes your (or Montreal’s) fancy.
There are some winter events that they haven’t been able to hold there (the stadium is closed for insurance reasons during heavy snow load months… because of the roof), and the Alouettes might move some of their late season or playoff games there… but again, nobody is seriously suggesting the facility will ever be profitable, much less make back the new roof investment.
So they dismantled the old roof and the concrete ring holding it in place: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/big-o-concrete-ring-dismantled-as-870m-project-continues-at-montreal-olympic-park/
So I don’t know how much it would really cost to dismantle the rest of it. The Mets and Yankees didn’t implode their stadiums because implosions are illegal in NYC (although both teams do it every fall). Now, yes, it would be more complicated because you couldn’t have big chucks of the concrete fall from the upper deck since there is a metro station below. But no one has ever shown any evidence that it would cost $2 billion. There was no request for proposals.
Quebec is a really important place politically (think Florida when it was a swing state), so they get piles of money from the Feds, and as a result, they have leeway to be stupid sometimes