Tag: World Cup

My Fifa team

junglebeats679Leave a comment

Throughout these last few weeks, I’ve been building a team of elite soccer players in a game called Fifa. How it works is you play games against other players with your team and as you win you complete challenges and win coins and packs. Packs hide players within them, and there are different ranks for players. For example, a really good player would be ranked gold, which is the best, followed that silver, and then the worst is bronze. This game translates to real life as well and tracks players’ stats if they are doing well throughout the season their rating will go up, however, if their skill has dropped then so will their rating on Fifa. A few of my favorite players that I have been seeking for a while are Brazilian legends such as Neymar, and Roberto Carlos. However, there has been a youngster taking the scene by storm, a young Ukrainian by the name of Mykhailo Mudryk who recently got signed by one of the most prestigious soccer clubs in the world Chelsea. I’ve been seeking his 90-rated card for a very long time.

IMG_2056
Photo Credit, Fifa Companion App

Qatari Clouds

therightliberalLeave a comment

Today the tiny country of Qatar produced a great idea: make a cloud to hang over a soccer match.

An artist's impression of the Al-Rayyan stadium for the 2022 World Cup finals

Qatar has run into a problem (many actually) after winning the bid to host the 2022 World Cup. The major problem is that it gets well over 120 degrees in the months that the World Cup is supposed to take place.

But FIFA Rules dictate that there cannot be indoor stadiums and that the games cannot be played in the Winter. I still do not see why FIFA then picked Qatar for the World Cup when there are rules in place that make hosting the tournament very difficult.

But Qatar is already taking real strides to solve the problems they are faced with. Their latest proposition is to make artificial clouds that would hang over the stadiums and block sunlight and provide a moist and cool environment.

They have many plans to do wild things to their stadiums such as one that is totally surrounded by media screens, 420,000 square feet of them. Incredible things such as that would make the World Cup very cool if they can pull it off.

In theory it sounds like a great idea but I do not know how feasible it is. I do know that after seeing the pictures of the stadiums Qatar is planning on building and hearing all their crazy ideas, I am ready to pack my bags for the Qatari World Cup today.

Qatar and Russia Beat out US and England to Host WC

therightliberalLeave a comment

Today, 22 FIFA members voted to put the World Cup in Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022. This comes as a bit of a surprise when there were countries like the US and Australia bidding against Qatar. Russia receiving the 2018 bid was not a huge shock after allegations surfaced that England FIFA members had possibly participated in unethical business practices (To put it nicely).

Sepp Blatter hands over the world Cup to Russian minister of Sports Vitaly Mutko

So some stats on Qatar. First for all of you who have never even heard of it, it is in the Middle East, a peninsula sticking off of Saudi Arabia. The population is just over 1.5 million with 4, 416 square miles of land, making it the smallest country in land and population to ever host a World Cup. Qatar has the second highest GDP per capita in the world, with wealth coming from its large amount of oil and gas reserves. The country is an absolute monarchy, being ruled by the al-Thani family since the mid-19th century.

Qatar

Obviously Qatar has the resources to build stadiums and other necessary infrastructure for the World Cup but there are some potential problems. First Qatar is a strict Muslim country, and soccer hooligans have a tendency to make religious people upset.

Read More »

Excuse My French

therightliberalLeave a comment

Many an Englishman will tell you that the only problem with the 100 Years’ War is that it did not last long enough. Well today the war was reborn, with England facing their rivals: the French. The battle was quite one-sided, the French looked the more dangerous and came out the victors in a 2-1 win.

England look disconsolate during the defeat to France

Although this is a cause for depression amongst the English there are multiple good things to be taken away from this. The first is that there was a very good performance by Andy Carroll, a promising young player. Peter Crouch continued his scoring, grabbing his 22nd goal for his national side.

But what really should make the English happy is that it looks like the national squad is finally realizing that the key to success comes from youth. Look at Germany in the last World cup, all but two or three of their players will easily be young enough to compete in Brazil in 2014.

This is the key for England and with players like Carrol, who knows, they might be able to make enough progress to get through the round of 16 in Brazil.

However France finally showed that they have the potential to win after their stunningly abysmal World Cup performance. They do have some up and coming youth that could give them the opportunity to build a team that can win and not have to use their hands to make it to the finals.

For a full report of the game go to: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=843399&sec=global&cc=5901