Overnight, the joint bid for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2035 was cobbled together for a joint hosting by the Home Nations of Great Britain — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
When it comes to soccer, many of you know about teams and home fields from watching one of the world’s most famous leagues, the Premier League. Over the years, the Premiere League has not only had the best of teams from England, but has had teams from Wales in the top 20 over the year, like Cardiff City and Swansea.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have organized leagues and stadia. Scotland has a pair of giant teams in Glasgow, but Northern Ireland’s soccer history is much less well known. You probably can’t pick one person out of 1000 who could tell you the winner of last year’s league without the use of Wikipedia.
The game of women’s soccer is taking a tremendous economic leap. FIFA’s regulations for Women’s World Cup stadiums are more stringent than ever before, to the point where Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, and the Racecourse Ground are not yet up to FIFA standards.
Racecourse Ground? As in the home field for Wrexham?
Yep, Wrexham. This is the third-oldest club in the United Kingdom, one which had fallen to rock-bottom when the worldwide pandemic set in around 2020. But because of American investment and the buy-in from actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, the team moved from non-league soccer through to the second-highest level, the EFL Championship, this year. It would be the equivalent of a Gulf Coast League baseball team winning its way through to the majors.
The team plays in a humble one-level stadium called the Racecourse Ground, which dates to before the end of the U.S. Civil War. The place has undergone several round of improvements the last few years, including the installation of technology to make refereeing calls, underground heating coils for the pitch, and several extra stands surrounding the competition surface.
There are, however, a number of upgrades need for the Racecourse Ground to be able to meet FIFA standards in time to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup. I know we’re a decade out from the event, and engineers and architects can literally transform any space to something which would have been previously unrecognizable.
But the inclusion of Wrexham does make me question how and why FIFA is choosing important host responsibilities. The 2030 men’s World Cup, with games being held in Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, is already going to be an awful mess. You read it here.
It seems to me that FIFA is chasing fame rather than trying to make the game — your product — better. That’s no way to run a governing body.