World Cup

Qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the tour­na­ment can begin as much as four years pri­or to the start of the tour­na­ment, and it’s not uncom­mon dur­ing the world cup for entire coun­tries to shut down to cheer their team on – with more than half of the inter­na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion watch­ing a game at the last tour­na­ment – as over the course of 90 min­utes of the foot­ball games and over the five weeks of the tour­na­ment both nation­al heroes and vil­lains will be made and play­ers have the chance to cement their lega­cy and names in their nations his­to­ry.

When: The world cup takes place every four years, usu­al­ly last­ing for five weeks begin­ning in late June and fin­ish­ing in mid-July, with games staged rel­a­tive to the host nations time zone. Owing to the daft deci­sion to host the tour­na­ment in Qatar (thanks FIFA) in 2022 where sum­mer tem­per­a­tures can reach 40c, the tour­na­ment start time has been moved to Novem­ber – Decem­ber to accom­mo­date fans and play­ers.

Where: The world cup takes place in a host coun­try or host coun­tries and switch­es host for every tour­na­ment, with the next edi­tion of the world cup due to take place in Qatar in 2022 and the 2026 edi­tion being tri-joint­ly host­ed by the USA, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, with a host nation required to invest bil­lions in infra­struc­ture and sta­di­um con­struc­tion as well as go through a ten­der­ing process (which is often mired in cor­rup­tion claims) to secure the right to host the world cup.

For the qual­i­fi­ca­tion peri­od each team will play against their drawn or region­al oppo­nents both home and away, with the home game tak­ing place in the nation­al sta­di­um of the home coun­try.

Dura­tion: The world cup last for just over five weeks, with 64 games tak­ing place over the entire tour­na­ment — allow­ing for the round robin group stages and the knock­out stages to take place – with each game last­ing 90 min­utes.

Includ­ing the qual­i­fy­ing stage, the time tak­en for a team to go from qual­i­fy­ing to win­ning the com­pe­ti­tion can take over four years.

Tick­ets: To offi­cial­ly get tick­ets for the world cup, sup­port­ers are required to reg­is­ter on the offi­cial FIFA web­site, and then  approx­i­mate­ly one year before the tour­na­ment begins, or when the qual­i­fy­ing stages have been com­plet­ed, appli­ca­tions are allowed on a raf­fle type basis for tick­ets on the offi­cial Fifa web­site: at[https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/ticketing/].

Typ­i­cal­ly, tick­ets are des­ig­nat­ed in one of three cat­e­gories, with cat­e­go­ry one being the most expen­sive with prices rag­ing between $500 — $1500 for games depend­ing on the stage of the tour­na­ment and between $170 — $500 for cat­e­go­ry three tick­ets, with there being no guar­an­tee of tick­ets or game that a sup­port­er will get if suc­cess­ful in the FIFA draw.

Along­side this, despite mul­ti­ple efforts from Fifa and organ­is­ers, tick­ets do end up on scalp­ing web­site where they can go for up to $15,000 for the final and despite the risks asso­ci­at­ed with these tick­ets, some fans do turn to these sites for a chance to watch their team be vic­to­ri­ous.

Need to Know: Expect foot­ball fans across the world and in the host nation to unite dur­ing the world cup – so if attend­ing expect not just a high stakes game of foot­ball but also a warm wel­come and a par­ty like atmos­phere regard­less of the team sup­port­ed.

It should also be not­ed that along­side the demand for tick­ets, hotels and air­fares can be both expen­sive and hard to come by in the host nation so its advised to book in advance and if attend­ing mul­ti­ple games in dif­fer­ent cities in the host nation plan well in advance.

More Infor­ma­tion: For tick­et­ing infor­ma­tion, qual­i­fied coun­tries, kick off sched­ules and the his­to­ry of the world cup vis­it [https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/].