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Friday, April 18, 2014

QATAR ON HOSTING THE 2022 WORLD CUP A MISTAKE?

Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, has said that it was a mistake to award Qatar the football World Cup in 2022 because of the searing summer climate. 

Blatter made the remarks in an interview with the Swiss television station RTS, which was broadcast on Thursday.

"Sepp Blatter admits "error" in awarding tournament to country with scorching climate but denies Qatar bought the event".

When asked if the decision was a mistake due to the high temperatures, he replied: "Of course, it’s an error", before adding: "You know, everyone makes mistakes in life."

Blatter added: "The technical report of Qatar indicated it was quite hot during the summer. However, the executive committee, with an overwhelming majority, decided that the games would be in Qatar."

However, he denied that Qatar had bought the tournament, saying: "No, definitely not. These allegations are driven by politics."


Qatar was awarded the rights to the tournament, which has always been played in the northern summer months, in 2010.

Critics questioned how a tournament could be played in the humid Qatari summer, where temperatures can reach 50C and rarely dip below 40C in the day. Qatar promised air-conditioned stadiums and a rapid transport system to get fans to the games in comfort.

It is not the first time Blatter has made such remarks, but they are certainly the most forthright.In September 2013, he told the Inside World Football website that "it may well be that we made a mistake" in the awarding the tournament.

In January, a public split emerged within FIFA after Jerome Valcke, the secretary-general, said the tournament could not be held in the summer and would be moved to the winter months. Other members of the body quickly denied a decision had been taken.

Qatar has also faced an international campaign to improve the dangerous conditions in which labourers work on World Cup projects, and their lack of rights under the kefala employment system.
Earlier this week, the government announced that it was reforming the employment system, but set no time limit on when it would do so.

In March, Valcke told Al Jazeera that FIFA was "not a United Nations" and was not responsible for labour issues in Qatar.

"That's not our role. It's unfair if we get pressure from the rest of the world saying 'hey FIFA, that's what's happening in that country and you have to change the way the country behaves'," he said.
--aljazeera.com





A model of the Al-Khor Stadium in Doha, Qatar, which will be used for games during the 2022 World Cup.
                                   
Every four years, soccer fans around the world revel in what has been called the biggest sporting event on the planet — the World Cup.
The 32-team, 2014 tournament in Brazil is less than two years away. Russia is next in 2018. In 2022, Qatar, an oil- and natural-gas-rich country with a population of less than 2 million, steps onto the global stage.
Will Qatar be ready? Does it have enough of a soccer pedigree to pull off a World Cup?

A number of factors help Qatar make its case, now and nine years down the road. Teams in Qatar have attracted some big-name players from around the world, most near the end of their careers, attracted by one final big payday. The likes of Claudio Caniggia, Ali Daei, Fernando Hierro, Stefan Effenber, and Pep Guardiola prolonged their careers and feathered their bank accounts, for sure. In 2011, Qatar hosted the Asian Cup (the region’s equivalent of the European Championships), a well-organized event that went off without any major glitches.

In commercial terms, Qatar has flexed its financial muscle in Europe: Barcelona wears the name of the Qatar Foundation on its jerseys; Qatar Airways sponsors Tottenham Hotspur; and Qataris have bought into some of Europe’s top leagues, acquiring
Paris Saint-Germain and Málaga.

 Qatar is also home to the 2011 Asian club champion — Al-Sadd, which defeated Jeonbuk Motors of South Korea in a penalty kick shootout. Al-Sadd then won a match at the 2011 FIFA Club World Cup in Japan before being thrashed by Barcelona, 4-0. But Al-Sadd planted the Qatari flag, so to speak, among some of the world’s top clubs.

The negatives have been discussed since the day FIFA awarded the tournament for the first time to a Middle Eastern country: the oppressive temperatures in the summer, restrictions on the consumption of alcohol in a strict Muslim country, cultural and religious rules about the role and place of women in society, not to mention in the soccer stadiums.

Many issues have yet to be resolved: whether stadiums can be built and cooled to protect players and fans from the heat; whether the World Cup should be played in the summer or be moved, perhaps to January; whether the country can accommodate soccer fans used to drinking and openly displaying their passion for the game.Do you think FIFA was right or wrong to award the tournament to Qatar? Was Qatar’s financial footprint pivotal in landing the World Cup? Will fans go there out of allegiance to their national teams or because Qatar seems like an interesting destination?

Shuaib B. Ahmed, a native of United Arab Emirates, now lives in New York. You can read his other work on his blog, Footynions and follow him on Twitter.

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES

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