UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions

By comparison UEFA sounds a lot stronger.

It makes no sense to me that people favored the (much) worse product because “tradition”.

So it used to be that there were pre-tournament games, to qualify.

A lot of countries... they wouldn't qualify. They'd play an ample amount of pre-tournament games though.

Now, you seen more countries qualify, and you see countries who used to not qualify, dropping ASAP (in the deathmatch 16th matches, right after poule).

So what did we get out of that? A few matches during the tournament, and they were quite frankly meaningless.

These countries which made it to deathmatch 1/16th gained nothing. It is a scam, a trick. They think they gained fame, but they really have not, since the barrier to get to the deathmatch has been lowered.

Furthermore, if you follow a corrupt scheme, you can ensure a country like Argentina is going to have the least chance to end up with strong opponents.

No, mr. Infantino. We need less corruption in FIFA, not more.

* We don't want a drink break to watch commercials..

* ..or a 30 min break with a bunch of actors (who sing with autotune) when your own rules say it may only be a 15 min break.

* We don't want red cards commutated or revoked.

* We don't want star players not getting yellow or red card, when other players are getting one for the same foul.

* We don't want a yellow card being reversed, then given to an opponent, based on 'identity mismatch'.

* We don't want to see racism or political statements.

* We don't want to see rugby, we want to see football.

* We want to see fair-play, with a meaningful VAR which can be called by the captain or coach of each team twice (getting back their call if agreed on).

You don't need a for-profit in your chain to fix the above. You need a non-profit with a non-corrupt chair, and you've proven you're not fit. Red card for you, mr. Infantino. You're out, arrivederci.

The African confederation is actually marginally smaller than the European one. It also has no shortage of internal disagreements, brings in very little revenue, and the bigger nations are ultimately going to look at where the money is and see that it isn't trying to plough ahead without Europe, Asia or the United States.

CONCACAF was actually one of Infantino's best hopes, a mixture of the US, a few nations that hugely benefited from Infantino's other world cup reforms and a few that have no realistic prospect of World Cup football but would love $40m in return for voting a particular way...

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ce345l6kg6ro - "Uefa - the body that governs European football - has 55 votes. Concacaf, which oversees football in North, Central America and the Caribbean, has 35 and Asia has 46." which only leaves 75 votes from the 211 and he'd need 106.

[1] I've no idea why the BBC doesn't properly capitalise UEFA or CONCACAF. I assume it's either some weird style guide or the subeditors are having another day off.

That's 75% of the final four and of the quarterfinals, 44% of the round of 16. Then if you add CONCACAF into the mix, it comes to 63% of the RO16.

> You're excluding about half of the planet by only mentioning Africa.

It's the half of the planet that nobody cares about when it comes to football.

The US is a vast market. It's played a lot in the US as well. The MLS also not a tiny league. Football is also huge in Mexico.

Hugo Sanchez was truly a legend. Among many.

So this will now be the new norm. Host countries will be ones where laws don’t prohibit gouging fans. They’ll come up with creative solutions to meet the rotation requirement like the upcoming host a couple games in South America farce that’s allowing them to go to Saudi Arabia after that. They’ll continue to push the boundaries of decency until they get sufficient pushback.

Not as much as the popular culture makes out. Association football (as opposed to folk football) was codified in English private schools such as Uppingham, and at Cambridge University. Working class people played very different forms of football at the time, including carrying the ball etc. Association football was the more genteel form of the game. It used to be the main sport at Eton College, not rugby.

For a second, I thought the Americanization[1] of fùtbol would be done gradually and no one would complain as we'd be slowly boiled. I'm glad the corrupt bastards got greedy/impatient and took a big swing.

1. Sports primarily as a business, catering to owners first, sponsors second, broadcasters third, and then lastly, fans. IMO non-profit sports organizations are the best model for fans, who I identify the most with.

The $15 billion figure is for FIFA's ENTIRE 2023-2026 revenue cycle, so not just this World Cup. But the obvious "low-hanging fruit" was making the tournamenta lot larger (104 matches instead of Qatar's 64), so a lot more tickets, hospitality sales, ads etc

Also two 3 minute hydration breaks per match, giving broadcasters additional advertising windows.

That's your "optimization".

Hah and because Pizza Hut wants exposure, it'll come out more and more.

It's an excuse to squeeze more money out of the brand with a lower quality product.

It's shrinkflation.

You certainly mean the Malvinas /s

Whether a national team qualifies isn’t that strongly correlated to whether the sport is popular. Most of south and Central America are as fanatical as Brazil or Argentina, but they were not in the tournament.

Nobody likes Infantino.

In addition to them all knowing that a World Cup without UEFA isn't going to happen, they also weren't impressed by being presented with a fixed offer and a ticking clock rather than an opening of negotiations....

Depending on whether the South American teams show up…

Like, mmm, Lance Armstrong, after he got caught.

https://www.uefa.com/running-competitions/financial-distribu...

97% returns to the club and 9.3% is ear marked for football development programs.

Some of the money is utilized as reimbursement to clubs that did not manage to qualify.

PS Treating HN like a search engine is not constructive. No flak tho, I also do this sometimes.

The pathetic state of football governance is, largely, down to corrupt EUROPEAN admins (UEFA or not). The only main non-Euro contributor I can recall in my lifetime was Havelange.

And the previous imbalance in spreading revenues commensurate with the talent (and its the talent, much if it African, which makes the product so appealing, hence the revenues) is largely (not entirely) down to Europe insisting on keeping hold of the bulk of it.

This situation is being rectified, but MY POINT WAS that the existence of this unfair situation created a playing field which allowed corrupt & unscrupulous mobsters (Blatter, Infantino, etc) to get THEIR personal agenda through on the back of pretending to combat the above.

Literally no-one thinks Infantino is good for the "game". But there are those FA's (even some in Europe) who think he might be better for THEIR countries. And thats not easily waved away by saying "oh, they're just personally corrupt Africans, etc". There was an underlying unfairness in the system IN THE FIRST PLACE.

And THE ENTIRE POINT of my original post was pointing out where the origin of this ORIGINAL SYSTEMIC UNFAIRNESS came from.

None of this was an attempt at whitewashing corruption & mismanagement in African or Asian FA's. The background point, which went WAY above your head, is that in the worst case - they're about as bad as their European counterparts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60867042

> 50 foreign labourers died and more than 500 others were seriously injured in 2021 alone, while another 37,600 suffered mild to moderate injuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_issues_involving_...

The problem withthis is that FIFA/IOC _rely_ on the athletes, players and countries, but none of those make any money so they _can't_ be bought. The prestige and honor is the reason to compete in the world cup/olympics, and money won't change/fix that. See LIV golf for what happens when you try it.

Switzerland might not be corrupt, but they are fine with enabling it.

The US itself is far and away the world's biggest sporting nation, and many there see football's informality and cynicism as antiquated and, honestly, embarrassing. The world outside of the US wants to protect "their" game, though it's not theirs to begin with, ignoring the existing, systematic issues with it, even making contrived arguments about the word "soccer" itself.

FIFA's shenanigans off-the-field were a problem, but they're not unique to the World Cup nor its location. I'd argue the last Copa America and Cup of Nations had worse issues with officiating/corruption.

Other than those awful hydration breaks, they didn't ruin it much. I didn't love the extended half time in the final, but I was only hate watching Argentina anyway so didn't care much. Better to have the standard interval but not egregious to extend in the final. Overall it was a good tournament, a proper "feast of football" as we used to say. Some fine-tuning to do with the VAR but even then there weren't as many egregiously unfair calls as in years past. (Croatia's disallowed goal being a memorable example because it was so rare.) Many, many good games and some memorable moments - Cape Verde!

I’ve followed the sport all my life and referee complains I would say less than usual.

I like having more teams. Might even extend to 64 next time.

These are difference of opinion. Nothing singles out this world cup as a “shit show” as the OP. It was a great experience to me and pretty much anyone I encountered in the stadiums.

Refusing entry to a Somali referee on the spurious grounds of links to terrorism was a disgrace.

The overturning of Falorin Balogun's ban was a disgrace.

The ticket prices were a disgrace. The transport to the stadiums was a shambles.

I could go on.

I actually loved the 48 teams. It will probably expand to 64 next cup. More people tune in, nice surprises, upsets, cinderella stories.

Access and price of tickets has been a problem for a long time and getting worse for every live event. Not exclusive to the World Cup.

There are obviously things to improve but the game and experience for people watching and attending was pretty amazing. Leaving in the US I ve had fantastic interactions with strangers everywhere for weeks.

If that’s what a “shit show” is I’m looking forward to more ha ha

I can't say I think the halftime show is a big deal at all though.

Every single break time decision in football is arbitrary already.

At least with hydration breaks, everyone got them and they were the same for everyone. I know sports fans don't like change. If everything else about this WC was perfect I'd say "Fine, go ahead, complain". But this is the tiniest, most meaningless thing to moan about nearly 3 weeks after the tournament is done.

This is the thing that is too much? I just don't get it. The entire thing is a spectacle to sell ads.

Also pro/anti capitalism isn’t the issue - narrow mindedness and a lack or empathy is.

Infantino who seems to oscillate between Qatar and Switzerland I assume has a rather strenuous connection to the rest of Europe

[1]: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/44397617/ex-fifa-chie...

Hearing you say this is like hearing someone say that the United Nations is a commercial failure.

Its purpose is to regulate and administer international football on behalf of its member associations, enforce compliance with its regulations, organise international competitions to relieve the member associations of the hassle, administer anti-doping programmes and related integrity measures (lol), and, through its membership of IFAB, help determine and promote the consistent application of the Laws of the Game worldwide. Its revenues only exist to support those functions.

Is there a need for it to have profit motive? Would the world be better if it decided it should have one? I don't see how the answer could be yes to either question.

The mention of guardrails is a little Onion-esque given the organisation and people in question

It's a non-profit. So who cares? Why is more money automatically good?

> making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure

They aren't alike. The NHL doesn't happen once every 4 years.

Fortunately the English top division alone makes a similar amount to NHL (from a quarter of the matches) and the English second tier makes a similar amount to the Super Bowl[1], which is why football's governing body doesn't particularly need lessons on how to commercialize stuff from people in the United States who probably also don't understand football's financial centre of gravity, but will happily buy commercialization rights for a quadrennial tournament if sold to them in a backroom deal at a sufficiently low price...

[1]yes, I know the Super Bowl is only the one game. But if you can compare a 1400 game annual league to a 104 game quadrennial tournament, then I can compare an entire season to a single big game :D)...

Soccer leagues make a total of about 5-6x as much as the NHL. The Premier League alone makes 25% more than the NHL.

Besides, your tally of sports incomes is wrong since you didn't include UEFA revenue, which is also football money, in the count.

Not everything has to have the teeth of capitalism continually biting down harder and harder. Plateaus are ok (and this is nowhere near a plateau)

A single NBA season has over 1200 games - over 12 times as many games as the most recent World Cup (104). And that was already the largest-ever WC. Does the NBA have 12x the revenue of the WC?

> Even the World Cup brings less revenue than one season of the NBA

This isn't even true btw. The 2026 WC made $15b and the 2025-26 NBA season made $14.3 billion. [1][2]

Most of the WC's participating teams represent places poorer than the places NBA teams hail from.

You can't run the World Cup like the NBA. That's not how the sport works.

1. https://www.sportico.com/leagues/basketball/2025/nba-revenue...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/18/fifa-record...

It's one of the only things left whose purpose is not just to make as much money as possible.