2022 FIFA World Cup

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Liliana Jamenez

The last Fifa World Cup was held in 2018, and now the next match will be November 20th, 2022. For those who don’t know what a world cup is, it’s a quadrennial tournament, pitting the best national soccer teams against each other, for the title of world champion, and is one of the most important sports events in the world. This year’s host for the World Cup is Qatar, which in 2010, edged out  the United States, and Japan to win the right to hold the tournament. How the teams work is The 32 teams are divided into eight groups of four, designated by the letters A-H. In the tournament-opening group stage, each team plays all the other teams in its group once. The top two finishers in each group advance to the round of 16. After that, the World Cup is a straight knockout tournament. The teams that  will be playing in the world cup are:

Group A: Ecuador, Netherlands, Qatar, Senegal.(netherlands and senegal have qualified for round 16)

Group B: England, Iran, United States, Wales. (US and England have qualified for round 16)

Group C: Argentina, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia. (Argentina and Poland has qualified for round 16)

Group D: Australia, Denmark, France, Tunisia.(france and Australia have qualified for round 16)

Group E: Costa Rica, Germany, Japan, Spain. 

Group F: Belgium, Canada, Croatia and Morocco.

Group G: Brazil, Cameroon, Serbia and Switzerland.(brazil has qualified for round 16)

Group H: Ghana, Portugal, South Korea and Uruguay. (Portugal has qualified for round 16)

The first match will be between Qatar and Ecuador. One prediction I have about the World cup is that Brazil will win the world cup, because of how skilled of a team they are. For example, Football is the most popular sport in Brazil and a prominent part of the country’s national identity. The Brazil national football team has won the FIFA World Cup five times, the most of any team, in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002.

To have the World Cup in the winter is not normal, and usually takes place in July. The reason why it was held in the winter is because Qatar won the right to host it. Initially, Qatar said that it would go ahead and hold the tournament in its normal summer window, despite the fact that its temperatures can reach 120 degrees; it brushed aside any suggestion  it could not do so with the help of cooling technology that did not, at the time, exist. In 2015, FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, eventually concluded that the summer temperatures might have unpleasant consequences for fans and players — sluggishness, heat stroke, death, etc. — and agreed to move the tournament  to the relatively bearable months of November and December. 

The Temperature in Qatar this time of year is still 80 degrees, but installing systems meant to cool the air in seven of Qatar’s eight outdoor stadiums to a manageable 68 degrees. 

This is also the last world cup for a lot of good players this year including, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Luis Suarez, Thiago Silva, Yuto Nagamoto,

 Manuel Neuer, Karim Benzema, Aymen Mathlouthi, and Sergio Busquets to name a few,

Lional Messi has 786 goals and played 995 games since 2004, Cristiano Ronaldo has 818 goals and has played 1140 games since 2002 Argentina’s Lional Messi and Cristiano Ranoldo are both two of the best players in soccer, and since this will be their last World Cup, they are both going to be putting up a fight.