Comment by orangedog
4 hours ago
Sports people (I was listening to Bill Simmons) rated it pretty highly.
There was nothing egregious and it was widely attended.
4 hours ago
Sports people (I was listening to Bill Simmons) rated it pretty highly.
There was nothing egregious and it was widely attended.
The way that the Iran team was only allowed into the USA on match days was a disgrace.
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.
> The transport to the stadiums was a shambles.
This bit was kind of baffling to me. Like, the US has a bunch of large stadiums. Presumably they sometimes get used for stuff. How is it not a constant disaster?
There’s a medium sized (50k capacity) stadium near me, and even _with_ a train station with a train each way every ten minutes right beside it, and within easy walking distance of about five high capacity bus routes, it’s always a bit of a shitshow when a big event finishes. I’ve no idea how it could work _at all_ if you’re just depending on buses and cars, which a bunch of the US stadiums seemed to be.
I believe a big issue was that significant amounts of parking were closed at each of the host stadiums for "security reasons", fan watch areas, etc. When they did some overhead shots of the stadiums, you could see tons of empty parking lot space.
For local NFL games in a bigger stadium that, most people attending do drive, but do not park at the stadium, rather nearby, then walk the rest of the way. This spreads out the traffic over a much larger set of roads.
Acres upon acres of parking lots.
Ticket prices cannot go down unless you just want more money for scalpers. It's a simple function of supply and demand
Which of those were FIFA’s fault?
I attended games in Dallas and was shocked at how well the city / FIFA handled transportation. Especially for a city that usually has none.
Yes. I was there at the france-spain match. Flew in in the morning was directed to the shuttles by super nice volunteers. Reasonable lines that were mostly in the shade and they were handling free water bottles.
The World Cup final is supposed to be a war and the half time show turned it into a clown fest.
I can't agree with that. Host countries share their culture through the World Cup. South Africa had vuvuzelas, Qatar put a bisht on the winning captain's shoulders, and the USA had a half-time show.
Now if only it had been a good half-time show...
I'm almost too afraid to ask but what the hell...what makes a good half-time show?
I ask in earnest. I'm not American. I know there's a huuugggee buzz on who gets to do the Superbowl half-time show. But they all look the same to me: overly-polished extravagant pop performances. That can be an insult or a compliment depending on your mood but I say that as a fact. That description applies to the WC half-time show too so I don't see what makes it bad. Maybe you can accuse it of being even more over-the-top and garishly extravagant but does that make it bad?
Bad Bunny's half-time show seems to be generally considered good. Well, he's a good performer definitely and performed his show well. But what makes that different from the universally-panned WC one?
For the record, Bad Bunny isn't even in my daily playlist. I do have Coldplay but Chris Martin was so peripheral to the WC spectacle I didn't even notice him during the live broadcast.
It feels to me there's something else merited here other than just the performance itself. Bad Bunny, given his background and off-stage activism, was largely seen as a political statement. The WC show just seems too foreign for the core non-Northern American market.
I watched the WC final in a noisy bar. During the halftime the bar had its own entertainment while a muted Justin Bieber playing his guitar emoted on the big screen. I've since watched it in Youtube and I still don't get the universal disdain for it. Maybe they should've called in a bunch of Eurovision performers?