It's fairly absurd that the World Cup a full generation away from us in 2026 is critical for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting bids, but there's a chain reaction if China signals even a little more firmly that it will bid for the 2026 World Cup before FIFA's 24-man Executive Committee makes its determinations on 2018 and 2022 in December.

England bagged just two votes FIFA has released an official voting record for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on its website. Unfortunately, we don't yet know who voted for what but it does confirm that England's 2018 bid crashed out in the first round of voting with just two votes. See the full records [.

That smug looking football-hating barsteward above is Peter Wright. Let's get him on trial for treason

So, in case you missed it, The Mail on Sunday wires up a kiss and tell girl with a recorder who then tries to snare Lord Triesman, Chair of the FA and head man of England's 2018 world cup bid into making saucy comments.

For the second time in recent memory, the Americans are attempting to host a World Cup. The Go USA bid for 2018 and 2022 may have generated less media attention than its European competitors, but make no mistake: the Americans want it. Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Henry Kissinger, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman have all lent their names behind the cause.

The home city of the United States Soccer Federation, the nation's third largest city, the city that recently bid for the 2016 Olympic Games, the city that played host to the opening game in the 1994 World Cup, a city with a storied soccer history and a richly diverse soccer culture, my sweet home Chicago, is not on the list of cities for the United States' 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid, the Federation announced today.

Forgive the headline, please. It's just that, on occasion, it's nice to pretend to be writing for the Daily Star. In fact, that's probably preferable to actually writing for it, which, I would imagine, would be soul destroying.I digress.So, what could derail England's fledgling World Cup bid, I hear you ask?

Who'd have thought we'd be applauding Gary Lineker? The jug-eared ladies man who has managed to turn insipid blandness into a lucrative second career. The rather smug purveyor of obesity inducing fried snacks who made a funny face when Paul Gascoigne cried in 1990. Suddenly he's a hero. Well, not quite.

Hate these Saturday nights. There you are sat watching Doctor Who wondering why you'll never get the chance to go time travelling with Amy Pond when suddenly you realise the neighbours are having a party. What do you do? Ignore it, gatecrash it, call the police? Or just sit silently fuming, hoping they have a really bad night?

Saint Petersburg will host a World Cup semi-final in a 69,500-seat stadium with a moveable roof and retractable pitch if Russia is successful in its bid for the FIFA 2018 tournament.

Sure Los Angeles doesn't have a NFL team to fill this potential venue (yet, I always believe someone will move there again) but the designers of this stadium in east LA have one big thing in mind, the World Cup.

Not to shabby looking either if you ask me.

The LA Galaxy owners AEG are the ones planning to build this stadium to lure a NFL team and the World Cup.

Canberra ABC Sports journo and friend Tim Gavel has taken the easy option, like many older Aussie sports journos, once more.
Now Tim is not a noted friend of the round ball game and rarely gives any coverage to the game on his one hour Saturday morning ABC Radio show.
So when the phone-in section is devoted to football for the first time this year, or so it seems in living memory, something must be up.

FIFA just released their evaluations for each of the nations bidding to host either the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup. Here are the summaries for the four nations bidding for 2018. The countries are England, Holland & Belgium, Russia, and Spain. In each bid, you will see the minimum requirements set forth by FIFA as well as what each nation proposes for the specific requirements.

FIFA's technical advisers yesterday published evaluation reports of all 11 countries bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. None of them will be happy. Following four-day visits to each of the nine bid teams over the summer, FIFA found significant fault with every one of the potential hosts.

While this weekend's football extravaganza in the city of Barcelona made for instant gratification, a more intriguing story developed as England's bid for the 2018 suffered a huge blow. The strangest thing about it was that it wasn't delivered by one the nations against which England is competing; it came from the BBC.

So the verdict is out.

"For 2018 and 2022 we go to new lands, because the FIFA World Cup has never been in eastern Europe or the Middle East." says FIFA's president Joseph Blatter.

Yeah, we'll pretend that is the reason since there is absolutely nothing one can do about it. And I say this really in regards to Qatar, not Russia.

A few hours after FIFA's announcement that Russia will host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup, most people I've talked to share the same two feelings -- expectation and surprise. Since Russia had already been considered a strong contender before the BBC's Panorama program severely damaged England's bid, their victory announcement was not preceded by much suspense.

Russia and Qatar. The 2018 and 2022 World Cups will be going where no World Cup has gone before.
I was fairly unmoved by the whole shebang surrounding the bidding process. Certainly a fair few English noses have been put out of joint.
And many English journalists are now ranting and raving about the power of money and the questionable attitudes of the two countries to human rights and media freedom.

Denver has been included on a list of 18 cities that will be part of the United States' bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022. The announcement was made Tuesday afternoon in New York by the U.S. bid committee.

The other cities included in the bid were Los Angeles; Atlanta; Kansas City, Mo.

US Soccer announced today that a friendly match against El Salvador will be held on February 24, 2010 at 7 p.m. at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. The game will be broadcast on ESPNClassic and Telefutura. The recent news of Tampa making the final 18 proposed US venues for WC 2018/2022, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies finally learning that they will field a USL team already had the soccer contingent in Tampa buzzing.

Big Story
There is some breathless commentary to the news that FIFA seems set to restrict the 2018 World Cup bidding to European countries, leaving 2022 open for the rest of the world.

On this episode of the EPL Talk podcast, Soccerex's Misha Sher rejoined the podcast to talk about ...

• his views on the stage of the World Cup 2018 bids,
• any improvements in England's bid,
• the strength of Russia's bid,
• Soccerex's recent European Expo in Manchester,
• American sports business models and European football,
• the debt problems in the Premiership,
• the Red Knights' movement,
• the importance of Champions League for Liverpool,
• the Reds' on-the-pitch problems,
• his views on the new North American Soccer League.

Imagine if we win the World Cup bid, the AFL and of course Mr Ian Collins, CEO of Etihad Stadium will have the satisfaction of being the only CEO of a major stadium in Australia.....
Who doesn't get to host any World Cup games...nice one Ian, one for the CV, and the Grandchildren!

Totally unbiased and only coincidentally German, a man called Metin Tolan has devised a formula proving that Germany will win the 2010 World Cup Final. The other 31 teams shouldn't even bother to turn up.Tolan, who is a physics professor so surely should know better, explained his formula thus:"The last time we won the World Cup was back in 1990 and there have been four tournaments since.

Apparently Etihad Stadium is to miss out on the 2018 World Cup Bid?
Why? Because enlightened CEO Ian Collins and his AFL mates realised after five years of trying they could never get a pitch up to football standard....ain't that the truth!

The Football Association was once again rocked by scandal when Lord Treisman, chairman of both the FA and England's 2018 World Cup bid, was forced to resign after the Mail On Sunday published excerpts from a conversation in which Treisman accused Spain and Russia of conspiring to bribe officials in South Africa.

That smug looking football-hating barsteward above is Peter Wright. Let's get him on trial for treason

So, in case you missed it, The Mail on Sunday wires up a kiss and tell girl with a recorder who then tries to snare Lord Triesman, Chair of the FA and head man of England's 2018 world cup bid into making saucy comments.

An excellent graphic on www.knowyourmoney.co.uk dealing with the economics of the World Cup. In light of yesterday's budget you wonder how this British government can support England's 2018 bid. And, given the money that has been spent, Sepp Blatter and FIFA should be hunted down - haunted even - if just one of their claims about the legacy in South Africa is not acted upon.

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PAUL the Psychic Octopus, one of the undisputed stars of the 2010 World Cup, has been chosen as a new ambassador for the FA's bid to host the World Cup in 2018. True story.

With Paul in our corner, we cannot fail.

Okay, this is something of a non-story and a viral bit of fun.

Aussie Agent Moore was arrested in Dubai last night for alleged drunken behaviour.
There is no truth to the rumour that he was sent by the FFA to test the alcohol laws ahead of the Qatar/Middle East World Cup bid.
Nice one Craig but you got the wrong country.
Still how do you think England fans will fare at the proposed Qatari World Cup.

I believe most of us saw this coming before long. As FIFA is set to announce who will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups later this year its been no secret they want a European nation to host the 2018 Cup. The US had been holding strong to the fact that they could host at any given time but today the US Bid committee decided to withdraw their bid for the 2018 Cup and focus solely on the 2022 Cup.

So many great Aussie sporting stars coming out to support the World Cup bid. Ian Thorpe, Steve Waugh, Mark Webber, Robbie Farah, Cathy Freeman and now Liz Ellis.
And from so many different sports.
And not an AFL player in sight.
Do you think the AFL have banned them; surely they aren't that pathetic are they?

Photo by Rafael Alvez, through creative commons on flickr.com

While most of the attention around the recent World Cup bidding scandal has rightfully gone to the layers of corruption embedded in FIFA's current process, that has obscured another interesting angle to the story: the bid bribery was embedded in the nebulous way World Cup bids are supposed to serve development goals.

Amid the sort-of joy and sort-of pain that comes with the wins and losses of international friendlies (barring of course, the big rivalries that were played out on Wednesday -- Argentina/Brazil, Spain/Portugal, England/France, etc.), FIFA managed to slip in an innocuous report on their website, complete with a link to a 23-page PDF evaluating the candidates for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup.

The USA bid to host the 2022 World Cup has some powerful allies including former President Bill Clinton, who governed the country back when it last hosted the event in 1994.

And, as excitement builds for the crucial day of judgment on Dec. 2, when FIFA makes the decision for both the 2018 and the 2022 tournaments, Fox Soccer Channel is making its own bid -- to be the go-to name for soccer coverage within the United States.

Qatar offers amazing new stadiums to combat the desert heat. But will it be enough to beat the US?

Pretty much everyone and their mother has had opinons on the World Cup bids for 2018 and 2022. I had covered this a bit over the last year or so since the US Bid Committee came out and said they were wanting to host one of those two Cups.

Who will host the 2018 FIFA World Cup? Who will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup? Both these questions will be answered by FIFA today as they announce the World Cup 2018 & 2022 bid winners ( December 2, 2010) at 16.00 CET ( 15.00 GMT) England, Netherlands-Belgium, Russia and Spain-Portugal have bid for the 2018 World Cup.

After a more than thirty minute delay, a delay that felt like hours, FIFA announced today the host nations for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

2018: Russia.

2022: Qatar.

For supporters of the US bid, a tweet from Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl describing the scene before the announcement said it all: "Qatari delegation members getting handshakes & some hugs from FIFA voters.

Well now we know Russia-will be the host for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and Qatar will be the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

For the first time in 44 years, FIFA is announcing two World Cup hosts on one day. FIFA has done it only twice in the past, in 1946 and 1966, but both times, only a single country was bidding for each tournament.

Dear oh dear. All that fuss for two votes. South Africa was bad: this is humiliating. Once again, the gaping chasm between English football's expectations and rewards is brutally exposed. All we can do is sit back and huff: maybe next decade.

But this time, unlike in South Africa, the English cannot blame ourselves.

Earlier today FIFA voted and decided which nations would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup. While maybe some thought that the tournaments would go to England (2018) and the United States of America (2022), it wasn't so, and instead it was Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022) which won the rights to host the tournament.