World Cup prize money set to increase
COSTA DO SAUIPE- The prize money at next year’s World Cup finals will be increased by at least a third from that on offer in South Africa in 2010, Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke said on Tuesday.
The overall prize money for the tournament will rise to approximately $560m, around $140m more than the $420m available in 2010, when $30m was on offer to the winners.
It means the winners of next year’s tournament in Brazil will pick up around $40m.
“There will be a large increase of at least 33 per cent if you compare (the prize money) with the last World Cup, but this figure will be confirmed after the finance committee meets on Wednesday (yesterdaqy),” Valcke, speaking at a news conference at the resort in Bahia state where the draw for the finals will take place on Friday, told reporters. “Also, there will be around $70m available to the clubs who provide players for the teams in the World Cup, higher than last time as well.”
Valcke said full details of the prize money would be announced. The prize money available in South Africa was 60 per cent higher than that offered for the 2006 finals in Germany.
World Cup nightmare!
England’s chances of being drawn in a World Cup ‘group of death’ tomorrow have increased dramatically after the latest power play by Uefa president Michel Platini.
France, as the lowest ranked European side, had been expected to balance up the four pots of eight by taking the last place in Pot 2 with the African countries and non-seeded South Americans.
Instead, a summit of the six Fifa confederation chiefs, of whom Frenchman Platini is the most influential, decided that a draw involving all nine non-seeded Euro countries should determine which team relocates from Pot 4.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter said: ‘The draw is a draw and that is why we have to have it. Let us not pick teams and assign them.’ In addition, the draw has been tweaked to ensure that one of the four South American seeds - Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay - will be in the same group as the European team that is moved into Pot 2.
The upshot is that England are now more likely to face a nightmare scenario of being drawn against one of the top seeds in Brazil and Argentina as well as one of the unseeded Euro superpowers in Italy or Holland.
