When you block out holiday dates on the calendar and your boss asks where you’re jetting off to, the answer tends to be a single town, city, country or region.
A summer getaway starting in Paraguay, followed immediately by Morocco and then Portugal had previously been unthinkable.
That was until Wednesday, when FIFA announced the 2030 World Cup would be held across three continents and co-hosted by six nations.
A centenary World Cup back in South America no doubt made sense, given the first edition in 1930 was held in Uruguay.
But adding Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina to the existing bid from Morocco, Spain and Portugal puts players and fans last in this radical shake-up.
The three South American nations will host only a single game each, raising questions about how taxing the travel will be for players, never mind the financial cost to supporters and the environmental cost to the planet.
Clearly, after the Qatar World Cup — intended to be the first carbon-neutral World Cup but in the end far from it — concern for the planet was not among FIFA’s priorities here.
The same can be said about concern for players. With serious injuries ever-more common amid busier and busier domestic seasons, it is both unreasonable and irresponsible for a World Cup to take in three continents.
Imagine if England’s opener was in Argentina, Paraguay or Uruguay. After a long Premier League season in which many players will have competed in Europe, it is a ridiculous ask for the players to fly to South America for a single game, before turning the plane around and returning to Iberia for the rest of the tournament.
And how apt it is that I write lastly about the fans. After all, it is supporters who FIFA considered least of all when devising their audacious plan for a World Cup across three continents.
The cost to fans of European, Asian or African nations involved in a South American opening match would be astronomical.
FIFA have been right to resist the urge to make the World Cup more regular than every four years. But the payoff is that, in turn, it becomes a dog fight to ever host one.
