Rafalution

Is that better or worse than doing it over 25,232?

Yeah, you could say the same about the league or a domestic cup. I don't think its racist. Just stupid.

Outside of england games i've only watched stuff thats been on at the pub - last 20 mins of argentina /saudi aside. don't think i'll bother with the semis. might watch the final if argentina and/or morocco make it, but not too bothered. if it wasnt for the qatarness of it i reckon i'd have watched well over half the games.

clubs do do that, and there performance in those games suffers due to it. just look at how much better teams often do when they aren't in europe for a season. its the world cup - don't we want the best performances we can get rather than just cramming as many games as we can in?

if its only 5 or 6 days then you've got the 2nd and 3rd place teams playing 5 games in just over 2 weeks, and the playing 2 more with only 2 or 3 days in between. thats not how you get quality football

byes are awful because you have teams waiting a week to have a game

I'm all for the UK government allowing anyone who risks persecution in any country due to being gay to be able to come and live here. But the UK government not doing so isn't the root of the problem, the bigotry and oppression of these nations is. As jagster said, we should be putting pressure on these countries to change. Preventative action is better than the cure as always. Can we do both? Yes. But its much easier to get everyone on board with focusing pressure when its a singular event like a WC than getting everyone to write to their MP about asylum issues

Seems like it.

Its hardly completely unrelated when the workers in question built the stadiums Ah, the old sweatshop justification of 'its okay if we totally abuse the power dynamic here and treat people like **** while paying them a pittance, because its better than what they might have had otherwise' I mean there is, it would just require everyone that wants more money and more power to change to focusing on empathy instead. In the meantime, we should keep calling them out.

Has he been busy highlighting the issues while on bein?

Really if you want to expand it just go to 64 team and don't be afraid of having it in multiple countries where needed. Or if you are set on 48 still start with a group stage and just have winners and 4 best placed runners up go through (or all first and second places and 8 best 3rd places if you can fit in the extra round)

The issue with that is the qualifying round is going to have no big teams which means you are kicking it off with the 'smaller' teams for a few days first, and then the planning for that will be a bit of a mess with teams not knowing if they are just going to go and play 1 or 2 games, or if they might be there for the whole thing. at least with how it is now everyone knows they'll be there for half of it - and you're gonna have long stretch for the losers having to wait for the other round too happen Especially for travelling fans for those countries it could be a right mess

How are you going to schedule the games? The team that doesn't play on the middle fixture in each group Is going to have a week between games Gonna have lots of pointless part games too

I posted this in the otf qatar thread i feel it has aged poorly. leading up to it starting and the opening weekend criticism was everywhere, but all my normal football sites have pretty much entirely turned to coverage and discussion about the games - with the odd post/article about rainbow bands or hats and thats it. the news seems to have moved on entirely from any issues around the fan zones or the beer bans or anything like that. definitely know a few people with the same change in attitude as marius about it (not having a go at them or him, i understand - its a world cup, life is **** for a lot of people atm, why should they not enjoy it).

Good on them.

2 england games and the last 20mins of arg v SA are the only things i've purposefully watched. wales v usa happened to be on where i was. agree with jd that i don't feel like i'm missing out.

They don't need to, they do it to the first one and that would be enough for the other 6 to not wear the armband.

Absolutely trash by GMB to get him on to speak about this - i've not watched the clip but i'm guessing they didn't push back on him on his own homophobia?

They don't have any weebs though, so they've got that going for them...

It's only going to get worse, isn't it.

It's the later, it's nearly always the later.

You don't think brexit was rooted in racism? You don't think policing in this country is institutionally racist?

I mean this is just absolute nonsense.

The whole point of the world cup and sports washing in general from the persian gulf states is setting themselves up for the energy transition. its not about people stopping buying their oil now, its about what they can sell in the future. they want to be hubs of international business and high-end tourism. a disastrous world cup where they go back on deals isn't going to help