The World Cup is like a dinner party for 40 – fun to attend, but not so hot if you're hosting.
When you first show up at one, everyone around you has their emotional volume turned to 11. The best part of any World Cup is the couple of days before the soccer games start.
By the end, six weeks later, the locals have got the pallid look of someone who's just received a bill they weren't expecting for something they didn't really need.
The last couple, in Brazil and South Africa, have been icebergs of dysfunction. They tore through and helped sink the prosperity of both countries.
The next two, in Russia and Qatar, will be more of the same, but with less oomph. They will be conducted at exorbitant cost for very little return by the last sort of nations that want the trouble of putting on these boondoggles – autocracies with inferiority complexes.
In the coming weeks, Canada will kick off its official joint bid for the 2026 World Cup, along with the United States and Mexico. It's a slam-dunk, since a) it's North America's turn and b) no one else is dumb enough to want it.
It's not yet clear what it will cost or who will pay for it. At this point, Canada Soccer is going heavy on the patriotic generalities and light on the details.
That's caused some worry in Calgary, the city that hopes to bid for the Winter Olympics to be held the same year.
As reported this week by The Globe and Mail's Carrie Tait, the unredacted copy of Calgary's feasibility study nervously notes: "Canada hosting a portion of the World Cup in the same year as the Winter Games may have an impact on both the level of government support available from Sport Canada and the ability to attract and compete for sponsorship, media and ticketing revenue."
Maybe this is an abundance of caution. Maybe it's political gamesmanship. Doing both events is certainly possible, since the governments who agree to help finance them now are probably not going to be the same governments that have to pay for them later.
It would nice, I suppose – having our cake and eating it, too. You can buy that sort of publicity, and God knows we'd pay for it. But everyone should splurge on a party once in a while.
However, if this is going to become a choice between one and the other, there should be no debate – you pick the Olympics every single time.
As with the World Cup, the Olympic movement has become a cursed dreadnought pulling up in friendly ports every few years to ruin whomever has the misfortune of giving it safe harbour. The recent financial disaster in Rio deepened that impression.
Only one country has proved it can do the Olympics without bankrupting itself and/or alienating the local population and/or buying a series of venues that will turn into storage space – Canada.
We've cultivated a specialty in the Winter iteration because it's cheaper, we're good at it and we can get good use out of another hockey rink. We know we can pull off a Games at relatively low cost (Vancouver cost $7.7-billion versus Sochi's estimated $50-billion) and with good cheer.
The real feasibility test for any large-scale sports event is this: Do most affected people want it; and do the people in charge know what they're getting into?
Calgary 2026 passes on both counts. There is the fond local memory of the '88 Games, and a residual nationwide high from Vancouver 2010. Given that so much infrastructure still exists 30 years on, Calgary has limited the 'ugly accounting surprise' factor.
The World Cup is a different beast.
What do we know about it so far? Almost nothing. We know it will be held in two or three cities and feature 10 of 80 total games, one of which might be a knockout contest.
Canada has no stadiums that currently meet both of FIFA's key criteria – to hold at least 40,000 spectators as well as have natural grass (and not the kind shipped in on pallets and stapled onto concrete a week before kickoff).
There is a further problem in that all World Cup arenas must be "clean" – unused for any other purpose – in the month before the tournament starts and for its two-month run.
If you owned a stadium, would you be willing to install grass or expand seating for just one event? Would you want to shut down your operation for an entire summer in order to play host to four or five soccer games? And how much would you want to be paid for doing those things?
You might be amenable if the games were guaranteed hot tickets. These won't be.
This tournament will be the first to feature 48 participants. If you design your own flag and paint a border around your house, it's possible you may qualify for World Cup 2026.
Most of the countries involved will be competitive chum. Guess where those sides will be playing? You can forget about Brazil-Germany. We'll be getting Uzbekistan-Peru.
Presumably, we'll also get the games featuring our own team. Given the state of the national program, that might be worse. In all likelihood, Canada will be paying for front-row seats to its own international sporting humiliation.
So while co-hosting the World Cup sounds like a good idea now, it's highly probable that it's going to seem much less so by the time it rolls around. By then, it'll be an expensive annoyance for most people. In the week before, I predict the ratio of sports-specific hallelujahs to commuting-apocalypse screeds to be running at something like 1 to 4.
And that's all fine. If it can be done cheaply and without crippling our metropolises, Canada should be proud to share in a little of the World Cup's reflected glory (because that's all it will be).
But if there is one hint that it will derail or unsettle Calgary's Olympic bid – an event that rallies the entire country and promises to show us at our very best – it cannot be contemplated.
Cathal Kelly