Gearing up for the World Cup | PASOTI
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Gearing up for the World Cup

Mar 1, 2005
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Southampton
Had things been slightly different, and England had won the bid for the 2018 World Cup, we would now have a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and would be gearing up to host some World Cup matches in a few months time. Sighs.
 

Pogleswoody

R.I.P
Jul 3, 2006
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Southampton Green":7mxdsvns said:
Had things been slightly different, and England had won the bid for the 2018 World Cup, we would now have a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and would be gearing up to host some World Cup matches in a few months time. Sighs.


But what Division are we in? :think: Who's our Chairman? :think: Who's our Manager and who is playing for us? :think:

oh ... and what's our average home gate in the League? :think:
 
Aug 2, 2011
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It was "Gearing" up for the world cup that ultimately led the club into financial disaster. We ended up with a board of directors who had no interest in Argyle only an opportunity to line their own pockets. Fortunately that grubby group of indivduals are no longer associated with us.
 
Feb 18, 2009
869
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Plymouth
Presto":3hhxjcvn said:
It was "Gearing" up for the world cup that ultimately led the club into financial disaster. We ended up with a board of directors who had no interest in Argyle only an opportunity to line their own pockets. Fortunately that grubby group of indivduals are no longer associated with us.

Amen to that.

As a side note. I had more chance of hosting the WC Final in my garden than England winning that bid.
 
Sep 7, 2006
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Ghost":21vbudmn said:
Presto":21vbudmn said:
It was "Gearing" up for the world cup that ultimately led the club into financial disaster. We ended up with a board of directors who had no interest in Argyle only an opportunity to line their own pockets. Fortunately that grubby group of indivduals are no longer associated with us.

Amen to that.

As a side note. I had more chance of hosting the WC Final in my garden than England winning that bid.

Strewth, how big is your garden?
 

Pogleswoody

R.I.P
Jul 3, 2006
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Raul 1":4dv0e87u said:
Ghost":4dv0e87u said:
Presto":4dv0e87u said:
It was "Gearing" up for the world cup that ultimately led the club into financial disaster. We ended up with a board of directors who had no interest in Argyle only an opportunity to line their own pockets. Fortunately that grubby group of indivduals are no longer associated with us.

Amen to that.

As a side note. I had more chance of hosting the WC Final in my garden than England winning that bid.

Strewth, how big is your garden?

Not so long ago, most people had a WC in their garden! ;)
 
Jul 29, 2010
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:lol: Poggles.

Don't want to consider that chapter in our history for a moment longer than this post.

As it transpired the cards were deliberately stacked against England winning the bid so the whole thing was a complete fantasy. We might just as well discuss how we would be gearing up for our tenth season in the premiership following my quadruple rollover lottery win in 2006 :roll:

Didn't happen, was never going to happen, so why invest any thought to it.
 

davie nine

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Jan 23, 2015
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Plympton
Southampton Green":n4rbiuvf said:
Had things been slightly different, and England had won the bid for the 2018 World Cup, we would now have a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and would be gearing up to host some World Cup matches in a few months time. Sighs.

Not sure if we would have had a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and, if we had been a venue, we would only have seen one or two of the lesser games e.g. Morocco v IR Iran, Panama v Tunisia or Senegal v Colombia.
 
Mar 1, 2005
690
822
Southampton
davie nine":2wzbywrt said:
Southampton Green":2wzbywrt said:
Had things been slightly different, and England had won the bid for the 2018 World Cup, we would now have a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and would be gearing up to host some World Cup matches in a few months time. Sighs.

Not sure if we would have had a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and, if we had been a venue, we would only have seen one or two of the lesser games e.g. Morocco v IR Iran, Panama v Tunisia or Senegal v Colombia.

Wasn’t the stadium build a condition of our winning the bid? We’d already put the new pitch in before Prince William, David Cameron and David Beckham were humiliated at the FIFA announcement ceremony. And, “only” is a matter of perspective. I think that hosting Panama v Tunisia in the World Cup Finals at Home Park would have been momentous. Winning the bid was a bit of a coup at the time, a lot of Saints fans where I live were green with envy about it as they had not bothered to put a bid in to host the World Cup Finals until it was too late. We’d put Plymouth Argyle on the world map at the time, but that’s all easily forgotten considering how things worked out, and the dire consequences it nearly had on bankrupting us. FIFA span the roulette wheel and we decided to throw an Argyle ball around the rim. Instead of spinning out as it did, it could have fallen in; but it didn’t.
 
Sep 13, 2003
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davie nine":obaqau14 said:
Southampton Green":obaqau14 said:
Had things been slightly different, and England had won the bid for the 2018 World Cup, we would now have a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and would be gearing up to host some World Cup matches in a few months time. Sighs.

Not sure if we would have had a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and, if we had been a venue, we would only have seen one or two of the lesser games e.g. Morocco v IR Iran, Panama v Tunisia or Senegal v Colombia.

Colombia are 9th in the list of countries who have requested the most tickets. Compare that to Belgium who have only applied for 300 tickets for the Panama game and are 39th in the list of countries to apply. Also Colombian girls are pretty damn hot so I don't think host city would have complained at drawing Colombia!
 

IJN

Site Owner
Nov 29, 2012
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Mar 1, 2005
690
822
Southampton
Everything was right, apart from the one thing that turned out really mattered. No one on the Argyle Board had a clue as to how International (Japanese in this case) investors work. No money should have been spent, not a penny, prior to England being awarded the Finals unless that money was in our accounts and not in a Japanese account with a good-faith promise that it was coming irrespective of where the Finals went. That promise was never going to be honoured unless England were awarded the Finals but no one on the Board considered that, it appears. Everyone who watches World Cup Final matches, all over the world, would have been watching some matches being held in Plymouth this summer; how many billions of people is that? Instead we are on the map for anyone who looks as to what is happening in the English League 2; perhaps not in the billions of people I suspect :)
 
Jan 27, 2012
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Southampton Green":2metwjc3 said:
Had things been slightly different, and England had won the bid for the 2018 World Cup, we would now have a 35,000 all-seater Home Park and would be gearing up to host some World Cup matches in a few months time. Sighs.

Well that's according to Roy Gardner and Keith Todd.

In my opinion they are little more than well educated confidence tricksters. I don't really trust a word that they said. The whole thing looked implausible from the start.

Personally, I think they would have asset stripped the club and disappeared long before World Cup, even if England had been successful in their bid. There was never going to be any 35,000 all seater stadium.
 
Jan 6, 2004
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There is some bizarre myth that spending a few grand on a plan for a stadium, some balloons and the odd glossy brochure bankrupted the club. Lots of things went wrong but showing ambition to host the World Cup wasn’t one of them.