The 2010 World Cup is still weeks away, but it’s time to get serious about where the 2018 and 2022 tournaments are going to be held.
The United States will submit its bid book for the events on Friday in Zurich. The U.S. will be the final presentation, following Australia, England, Holland/Belgium, Japan, Korea Republic, Qatar, Russia and Spain/Portugal.
According to the official press release, “The U.S. Bid Book includes 18 potential host cities (alphabetically): Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa and Washington, D.C. The list of host cities includes 21 stadiums that are in compliance with FIFA’s requirements to be included in the bid book to FIFA. With the new Meadowlands Stadium now open, all 21 of the stadiums included in the United States bid currently exist and 18 have been built or renovated within the last 20 years. The venues average capacities of more than 76,000 spectators while 12 of the stadiums feature capacities between 75,000 and 94,000 fans.”
“It has been a tremendous honor and exciting challenge to compile the USA Bid,” said John Kristick, USA Bid Committee Managing Director. “FIFA established a very high standard in the bidding process and I am proud of how our team – the Bid Committee, the host cities, stadiums, training sites and hotels from across our country – rose to the challenge. While this is an important step, we must remain focused on the work ahead, including the important FIFA Technical Inspection Tour in September.”
All of this is building towards Dec. 2, when FIFA will select the host countries for the two events.
England (2018) and the United States (2022) are the favorites, but a lot can happen between now and then.
When did Denver fall off the list? That sucks.
Denver Is still on there, The fact Chicago isn’t worries me however. (and not just because I live there ether)
I heard blatter prefers countries that have a pro/reg system. i later read that australia will switch in about 5 years from single entity to pro/reg to try and increase level of play and win the bid. if thats true why dont we come up with a similar plan to win the bid? i mean there are alot of countries with a better plan than ours to be honest. i think we will win the bid if we complete another promise to fifa like we did back in 1994 when we established the MLS. if we please fifa with a pro/reg and global schedule then fifa will probably be in favor for us. im just saying………
i really want usa to win the bid. and i think our stadiums are top notch but we should really get rid of any NFL logos on all our stadiums if we wanna impress the crowd. also we have to come up with another way to hook fifa. we cant just keep saying “people will come” we have to give them a reason besides football. scenery, cities, shopping, lodging. i just really hope we can pull it off
Um… hello. The US aren’t favourites for 2022. Can you show me a bookmaker in the world which has the US as favourite??
As an Aussie, we are as far from pro/rel as it is possible to be whilst still having a fully professional league. We have the equivalent of California’s population spread out over a continent the size of the continental USA and our sports landscape currently also supports 16(soon 18) professional Australian Rules Football clubs(in the the hugely popular AFL), 16 professional Rugby League clubs(#2 in popularity NRL) and numerous other semi-professional sports leagues. Our 11(12 in 2012) team A-League is still finding its feet (ie growing strong roots & gaining stability) in an ultra competitive sports marketing environment. IMHO we will top out at 16 professional football clubs(perhaps in about 2015) for the A-League across Australia and New Zealand, pro/rel is a far distant dream, we still have to get our ‘FFA cup’ up and running to give the tier II semi-pro clubs some visibility on the national stage. If we win the right to host 2018 or 2022 it will be because FIFA see that our football (soccer) needs the boost that only hosting the world cup can provide. We would host a very professionally run and fun event, but like you we are one of the last hold outs against FIFAs total world domination.
I truly hope Australia gets it. And I see that you guys are properly calling Football Football. That’s good. That’s the true name of the sport. The yanks always look to Australia when making excuses as to why they misname the great sport of football. Now they no longer have that excuse. Kudos to Australia, a great footballing country.
LOL @ Alex… I hope that was sarcasm on your part: “I heard blatter prefers countries that have a pro/reg system. i later read that australia will switch in about 5 years from single entity to pro/reg to try and increase level of play and win the bid.”
Sure, expect FIFA who had no problem giving the US the World Cup in 1994 when they had no pro soccer league and pocketed the most financially successful WC then, holding out on giving the bid to the US because they don’t have a pro/rel system.
http://execusite.com/engine/members
I can’t see Spain/Portugal and Holland/Belgium getting it since FIFA doesn’t like joint bids and the financal state of Spain and Portugal is about to burst similar to Greece.
Korea and Japan had to share it last time but both countries are doing very well finacially.
Qatar is tiny and security would be a big problem.
This leaves the US, Australia, and Russia as probably the top choices.
CT blues, could you explain to my why security would be a ‘big problem’ for Qatar???