Tim Vickery
speaker
92 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 11 Aug
Tim Vickery’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
On last night's Off the Ball, South American expert Tim Vickery spoke to Owen Shane about the reasons that Commonwealth, the governing body for South America, were not part of the open letter against the FIFA president. Why does Commonwealth support Gianni Infantino? They played a wait-and-see game last week. And at the moment, the missing piece of the jigsaw is an alternative proposal. We have a protest, we don't have a proposal.
ComniBall South America, it has a short-term objective, which is a 64-team World Cup in 2030. Long-term, there's not particularly interested in a 64-team World Cup. 48 works very well for South America. There's only 10 nations, so there's only 10 votes. Of those 10 nations, six qualify, the seventh one goes into a playoff, and the qualification tournament is still interesting.
If you up it to 64, it renders qualification meaningless, and qualification is an important source of revenue for them. So in the normal way, South America's not particularly hung up on 64, but it's very hung up on 64 in 2030, and I shall explain why. The next World Cup, well, it was given to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. South America wanted it.
It's the centenary of the tournament, which began in Uruguay in 1930. So South America's big idea was, bring it home, let's celebrate the centenary properly. First one was in Uruguay in 1930. Uruguay has only one city, couldn't even stage a 16-team World Cup, let alone 48 or 64. So it was a joint bid, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, maybe Chile as well on the fringes, didn't win. But as a kind of sock to South America,
Infantino gave one game to Argentina, one to Uruguay, and one to Paraguay. Now this, from a logistical point of view, is nonsense. June, July in these countries, especially Argentina and Uruguay, is like walking in a fridge. The difference in temperatures between that and Spain, Portugal and Morocco is immense. But anyway...
From a South American point of view, this was a disappointment. They now have to upgrade the stadium. I use it in the singular, but it's only one game. And upgrade infrastructure for one match. What's the point of that?
So what they wanted is 64-team World Cup, which will give them the possibility of having more matches. And then they could spread the costs of this whole thing over more matches and it becomes more worthwhile. So that's what they want. Where are they going to get it from?
Well, it was South America who first mooted the idea of a special one-off celebration, 64 teams in 2030. Didn't get much traction. After 48 wasn't a disaster in the States, Infantino has come on board. Right, so they're looking around the table and thinking, well, we know we can get this from Infantino.
Well, I really can't.
I can't imagine how anyone thought that that was going to work just for so long.
They're going very negative quite soon after scoring the goal.
After scoring, Argentina immediately adapt.
And this is something that Argentina do extremely well.
They're able to flip between... This is a side that's been together a long, long time.
They're able to flip between different approaches in the same game.
So Argentina's approach immediately changes.
And England's attempts to press...
immediately after scoring the goal, aren't successful.
And then it becomes the Alamo.
And what was so badly missing, so badly missing, was an out ball.
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