RE: FIFA's behavior - ESPN FC had John Sutcliffe on yesterday to explain what happened in the mess over the rescheduling of the Mexico-England game that wound up never changing I would argue this explains more on their motivations than any alleged calls they got www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0nu...
"John Sutcliffe, John, thank you so much for being here with us. And I just want you to explain what the discussions were about and why a schedule change was even considered. Buenos dias. It's been some interesting Mexico City news, Mexican national team news. Yesterday, around 10 in the morning, three sources told me because of the concern the city of Mexico, the authorities had of pan safety, all the fiesta, all the celebrating around the street of Reforma, the angel of independence. They asked FIFA if they could reschedule and change the time of the game on Sunday instead of 6 p.m. It was noon. My sources tell me that FIFA agreed to the change, but then the information was filtered on social media and there was some backlash and FIFA didn't like about it. At the same time, the head coach, Javier Aguirre, came out on a radio station to give a very weird interview, like saying, hey, I'm not happy if they're doing these changes. It's also going to affect me. But if FIFA changes that, I agree upon. I can tell you that any coach who's ever played a game in Estadio Azteca would love to have the rival played at noon. The altitude, the smog. So then it was agreed upon that FIFA said, I'll change, I'll reschedule. But they didn't like the backlash. So they never came out and said anything because FIFA didn't like what happened. And the game sticks on, stays at 6 p.m. So that's a reality that they're never going to say publicly that FIFA agreed upon with Estadio Azteca and the Mexican authorities to change the game. At the end of the game, there are also some other things. If you put the game at noon, that's 7 p.m. in UK time, prime time. So the BBC could probably sell more ads three times more. So there were a lot of different aspects of changing this game. But at the end of the day, nothing happened. The game's going to play at 6 p.m. locally. The England team is happy about it because it would have been a huge difference. I can tell you when Roger Federer came to Mexico to play tennis or Tiger Woods came to play golf at noon, the smog, the altitude, it affects. So I think if you're talking about on the pitch of fairness, it's good the game stayed at 6 p.m. because it would have been a huge advantage to the Mexican team, even though the excuse was let's change it because of fan security."
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RE: FIFA's behavior - ESPN FC had John Sutcliffe on yesterday to explain what happened in the mess over the rescheduling of the Mexico-England game that wound up never changing I would argue this explains more on their motivations than any alleged calls they got www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0nu...