Where should the 2018 tournament be held?

Fair enough, this is a long time away and we’ve got two tour­na­ments to go before we get to the 2018 tour­na­ment but with FIFA announc­ing their short-list I thought it would be good to con­sider the options.

The 2010 tour­na­ment will be in South Africa, the 2014 in Brazil so with that in mind I’ve had a run though the can­di­date nations to offer my thoughts on where the tour­na­ment should go. The can­di­dates for the 2018 com­pe­ti­tion are Eng­land, Aus­tralia, Belgium-Netherlands (joint bid), Indone­sia, Japan, Mex­ico, Portugal-Spain (joint bid), Rus­sia and the USA.

Japan held a World Cup in 2002 so I think they should be ruled out straight away. As the 2014 tour­na­ment is being held in Brazil I would also take Mex­ico out of the equa­tion, because of how close geo­graph­i­cally the two nations are. Indone­sia would be a decent choice as would Aus­tralia just to take the tour­na­ment to places it had not been before but in all hon­esty I think it should be held in Europe.

Europe is the home of the great­est foot­ball leagues in the world and should not be ignored for three con­sec­u­tive tour­na­ments. Joint bids from Spain and Por­tu­gal and Bel­gium and the Nether­lands are intrigu­ing prospects but per­son­ally I would go for Rus­sia or Eng­land. Rus­sia has never hosted the tour­na­ment, while Eng­land has just once way back in 1966. Eng­land prob­a­bly has the bet­ter venues but Rus­sia is home to some great sta­di­ums as well and the Russ­ian crowds do cre­ate a good atmosphere.

The USA should not be ignored either as foot­ball is becom­ing increas­ingly pop­u­lar in the states. How­ever, for me Europe should be the des­ti­na­tion of the World Cup in 2018 as it has been ignored for the 2010 and 2014 tour­na­ments, with Rus­sia and Eng­land the lead­ing con­tenders in my hum­ble opin­ion anyway.