[Football] 1998 World Cup finals draw fixed

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

Plus ça change ...

" 'the English have failed completely in their organisation of this great competition. They have taken no trouble whatsoever to offer good service … and have substituted instead concern for something else: for charging excessively for all the poor and inefficient services they manage to offer. The greed and lack of organisation of the English is evident everywhere.'

Trains, they complained, were always late. Matches sometimes started late. There were not enough tickets for foreign journalists. The telephones in the press centres did not work properly. "

At least we're not Fecking Bent.

 

[Klaas]

I remember Maradona going on about this at the time. Don't think anyone listened to him.

 

[Icy Gull]

Because few expected France to get that far.

They were 7/1 at the start of the tournament so were third favourites behind Brazil and Germany and they were playing at home, there was plenty of expectation.

 

[lawros left foot]

Does this mean i have to hand back my sweepstake winnings?

#aftertiming

 

[melias shoes]

Is this why we meet Germany practically every time we make the knockout stages?

Possibly.

 

[melias shoes]

We met Germany early in the knockout stages as we normally cock up the group stage and scrape through in second place when expected to top the group.

This is probably the correct answer.

 

[Deleted member 18477]

Is this why we meet Germany practically every time we make the knockout stages?

We'd need to avoid Germany, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, France, Belguim, Portugal and Iceland to have any chance of getting to the final anyway... Can FIFA make that happen?

 

[Gwylan]

At least we're not Fecking Bent.

Really? How many people were banned for match fixing in the 60s?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

But the whole point of seeding is to try and steer an otherwise random selection in a particular direction. As has been pointed out England did it in 1966 to ensure all/most games would be played at Wembley. France tried to engineer a “dream” final and other times it’s used to control the spread of strong nations. Bit of a non-story if you ask me.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Is this why we meet Germany practically every time we make the knockout stages?

Is this correct though? How many times have England reached the knockout part and how many times have you met Germany? Given Germany regularly get to the latter stages the chance of meeting them will increase with every round you reach.

 

[Wozza]

They were 7/1 at the start of the tournament so were third favourites behind Brazil and Germany and they were playing at home, there was plenty of expectation.

They were a top 8 team with home advantage so of course their odds were decent.

But their tournament record had been woeful prior to the semi in 1996 (missed 1998, 1990 and 1994).

Zidane has been quoted as saying that France didn't expect to win.

And I recall an advertiser (can't remember who sadly) with a major campaign which basically said "Don't worry players, we don't expect you to win".

Anyway, hasn't it been shown that all hosts fixed the draw in this way, so the conversation is largely redundant...

 

[Triggaaar]

Whoa whoa whoa, hold up...do you mean to tell me that football is corrupt?!

We know the WC destination is corrupt, we don't expect every aspect of the game to be fixed.

Been done before as the article says and been done since - 2002 was fixed as well - South Korea and Japan couldn't have met each other until the final or 3rd place game and both would have played all their knock out games at home, until the final in Japan.

I thought the hosts playing their home games in their main stadium was standard, but I didn't think opponents were fixed - I thought that was supposed to be drawn out of a hat (bag, bowl)?

So how did they make it so that France and Brazil couldn't play each other?