Donathan

The impression I get is that Anderson is still leaning towards Scotland but doesn’t feel ready to commit yet.

I think there’s two factors at play here. The unionist vote is coalescing behind Labour, and a lot of the soft SNP vote are staying at home.

If they’re going to 24 they should use the same system that the euros use in football. The Swiss system sounds shite

Look, I get that it’s a by-election and people vote differently in by-elections. They’re often used to give the ruling party a bloody nose and even a Westminster by-election can be used for that when the SNP are in power at Holyrood. There will also be an element of the electorate in Rutherglen & Hamilton West that are out to punish the SNP for the actions of Margaret Ferrier. I know one woman’s actions should tarnish the entire party but not everyone thinks that way especially when they’ve had to go three years without effective representation. Even still, questions will be getting asked in Bute House. If that swing was repeated at the general election, large swathes of west central Scotland will go back to Labour, which will surely be fatal for Humza Yousaf.

Why are they using VAR to check goal line decisions? Is goal line tech not used in the champions league?

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Problem is the tournaments are now of the size that joint bids are necessary unless you want the hosts to be the same few countries on rotation. The euros is 24 teams now and expected to be 32 in 2032. Realistically only England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia could host a 32 team tournament outright. Similarly the WC is going to 48 and will probably go to 64 at some point. I’m not even sure the big 6 UEFA countries could host a 48/64 team tournament outright and there aren’t many other countries in the world that could. It’s not just about stadiums, but also hotel capacity, training bases, airport capacity and many other factors. What probably should happen though is that a 32 team euros held in 2 countries should effectively function as 2 separate tournaments. Let’s say Turkey and Italy do get 2032. Groups A-D should be held entirely in Turkey, then the qualifiers from those groups form a path with 4 x R16 games, 2 x QFs and 1 x SF. All held in Turkey. Similarly groups E-H held in Italy and the teams that advance play their knockout games there too. The only teams that have to move country is one of the finalists and (in the WC only) one of the teams in the bronze medal match ETA: The “one country” thing also ignores the fact that nations differ in shape and size and national borders are arbitrary. Fans having to move between Antwerp and Eindhoven, Copenhagen and Gothenburg, or Glasgow and Manchester, have a far easier task on their hands than those having to travel between New York and Los Angeles.

They dropped the strict rotation, but you still aren’t allowed to bid for a WC if your continent has hosted/is hosting either of the previous two

If world cups spanning 2/3 continents is going to become the norm then FIFA will surely go down to only banning confederations from hosting two world cups in a row (i.e., Europe/Africa/S.America would be eligible again for 2038)

I don't think the Euro 2028 in the British isles will be much less accessible, tbh. Also, it's only 3 teams out of 48 that will have to go over to South America.

One of them is morally wrong and the other one ruins the tournament as a spectacle. Both of them should rule countries out of hosting the tournament for me which makes them equally terrible.

Absolute tosh.

IIRC the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea had matches kicking off at 7.30am, 10.00am and 12.30pm UK time. I remember often watching the first half of the morning match with my breakfast before going to school and then catching part of the last game at lunchtime. Hasnt happened since then, although the last two World Cup finals have been late Sunday afternoon kickoffs in Europe whereas the three before that were all at night. Presumably that’s in response to complaints from the Far East. A Sunday 3pm/4pm kickoff in the UK is pretty much accessible to anyone unless you live in Oceania or an island in the Pacific Ocean. Even west coast Americans can wake up early or those in the far east can stay up late.

Both are equally terrible ideas. The first two pre-requisites to hosting a major international football tournament should be a decent record on human rights AND the logistical ability to hold the tournament at a time that doesn’t require multiple years of upheaval to the football calendar.

Yeah the cynic in me thinks this “compromise” is clearing the field for the Saudis in 2034, which unfortunately all but guarantees another winter World Cup. Unless the Far East come in (either China or back to Japan/Korea) or the Antipodeans want to bid off the back of hosting a successful women’s World Cup, then we are surely going to Saudi. It’s a bit of a disgrace that between 2014 and at least 2042, South America will host a total of three World Cup matches. CONMEBOL should only agree to this gimmick if it’s not considered a hosted tournament for the context of future bids, and South American nations should be allowed to bid for 2034/2038.

An interesting compromise has been reached between the only 2 remaining bids for the 2030 World cup It had been widely anticipated among the football community that the South American bid (Argentina-Uruguay-Paraguay) would win given the centenary of the first tournament, however that would mean an unprecedented third straight tournament outside of Europe (who traditionally hosted every 8 years, although more recently they went from Germany 2006 to Russia 2018 which would mean 2030 in Europe would make sense) The European bid involves Spain and Portugal, but also Morocco, making it the first every cross-continental bid in the men’s game (Saudi Arabia-Greece-Italy bid was recently abandoned, whilst the Australia-New Zealand WWC recently was cross continental in FIFA terms but not geographically) The compromise reached is that Spain, Portugal and Morocco will be the main hosts of the tournament but the three South American countries will get automatic qualification and will play their opening match in their home country before the tournament moves to Europe/North Africa. I can imagine this will go down like a bucket of cold sick with whatever teams have to go and play their opener in South America and then have a game in Valencia a few days later.

As long as FIFA continue to insist on world ranking being used to determine World Cup qualifying seeding and also insist on friendlies counting towards world ranking, there’s never such thing as a truly meaningless international friendly. You’re always at least playing for ranking points towards the next World Cup qualifying. I think your point regarding the lack of a sixth seed is a strong one and also the switch to 12 groups of 4/5 rather than 10 groups of 5/6 doesn’t help either. The nations league largely doing away with friendlies was a good thing but I preferred when every two year period consisted of 6 nations league games for everyone apart from the four finalists, 10 qualifiers, 2 friendlies and either 2 playoff matches or another 2 friendlies. Now with the smaller groups there’s a much higher chance that the worst team in your group will be a fairly respectable banana skin type outfit like a Georgia or a Luxembourg or a Kazakhstan rather than a San Marino or Andorra or Gibraltar. That further diminishes the chance for rotation.

I don’t have an issue with Brown being in the squad but I think the big difference is that Ferguson is genuinely really unlucky to be stuck behind guys like McGinn, McGregor, Gilmour and McTominay. None of the guys who play ahead of Brown are world beaters but he still doesn’t really deserve to be ahead of any of them.

I think there’s a group of players that are on the fringes of the squad, not automatic picks for every window but also never a surprise to see them in the squad. I actually think Clarke makes a genuine attempt to pick these players at least once every 2/3 windows to keep them interested and keep them as fairly regular faces in the camp so that if we get injuries and they become more important players then they’re ready to go at a moment’s notice. Brown, Shankland and Nisbet fall into this category amongst the forwards but also the likes of Greg Taylor, Ralston, McKenna, Cooper, all the sub goalies

Terrible idea. That would guarantee that some of them miss out. Unless you’re suggesting this group be played at some point before the main qualifiers (when?) with the losers still entering the normal qualifying?

Turkey have withdrawn their bid to focus on 2032, leaving the UK/Ireland bid as the sole remaining bid.

Ironically it seems like 10 minutes off the bench every week and the odd start was the ideal set up for him.

Quite something that the best Tory PM of the past three is fucking Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Losing large parts of HS2 and rowing back on net zero makes Sunak as bad as Liz Truss for me.

Back four is a must with KT out. Playing the back three without him has been a disaster in the past. Gunn Hickey-Porteous-Hendry-Robertson McTominay-Gilmour-McGregor Christie-Adams-McGinn

So the simplified permutation seems to be that we need either: - Any 8+ point win where we deny Ireland 4 tries - Win by 5-7 points, scoring at least 4 tries ourselves and denying Ireland 4 tries - 8+ point win with 4 tries