Good point, I hadn’t thought of the leagues. Bizarre decision.
Coincidentally, you can see Russia from there. 
One of the main factors militating against the Australian bid was that FIFA supposedly desperately wants to give China the Cup in 2026. Giving it to Australia in 2022 would make for two Asian Football Confederation countries hosting back-to-back Cups, which isn’t supposed to happen. What I don’t understand is why the same constraint didn’t apply to Qatar, which is also an AFC nation.
I suppose the FIFA Executive Committee couldn’t pass up that many bribes…
Attendance might not be much of a problem really, what with the place being a flat, barren, sweltering, sandstorm prone desert where you can’t drink a beer in public.
I sort of wonder whether 2026 will ever actually happen in Qatar. It’s one thing for FIFA to pat itself on the back about going to a non-traditional place (and taking huge bribes), but once the reality of what they signed up for starts to stare them in the face, I think the tune might change.
Hidden factor.
The favourite to be the successor to Sepp Blatter as head of FIFA is…
The head of the Qatari bid and, also the head of the Asian Football Confederation. I suggest that this might have an element of “jobs for the boys” in conjunction with some of the other things suggested in this thread.
Can WikiLeaks please get on with the buiness of finding proof of what a disgracefully corrupt organization FIFA is?
The BBC had a go this week. The attack-dogs of the tabloid press might have a go, now.
From various journo tweets (I don’t know how to link to tweets) England only got two votes, including their own vote, and Qatar was only one vote off winning outright in the first round of voting. The latter smells like shit.
From The Guardian’s Live Blog (so ignore the times, it’s just when they posted the info to their site), the voting went as follows:
How Qatar won 2022 vote
4.59pm:
Qatar beat USA 14-8 in the fourth round of voting, but almost claimed it in the first round.
First round: Australia 1, Japan 3, USA 3, Korea Republic 4, Qatar 11
Second round: Japan 2, Korea 5, USA 5, Qatar 10 votes
Third round: Korea 5, USA 6, Qatar 11
Fourth round: USA 8, Qatar 14
Qatar win
How the 2018 voting went
4.57pm:
First round: England 2, Holland/Belgium 4, Spain/Portugal 7, Russia 9
Second round: Holland/Belgium 2, Spain/Portugal 7, Russia 13
Russia win
World Cup in Qatar, yes a WC sans drunk hooligans. Long over due I say, especially since in 2018, the Russians would have filled everyones quota for about 25 years.
Thanks Cumbrian.
On the bright side, no major infrastructure needs building in the US.
So when Qatar runs out of money and people realize there’s no beer. They’ll just swap it on over to the backup, like they did for the SARS scare in China during the women’s WC.
Yes, I can imagine that about a year before it’s due to happen they find that Qatar is well behind with building all the hotels and stadiums that are needed. At that point, they can switch it to the U.S., which already basically has what’s needed without building much new.
This also means that Qatar automatically qualifies for the WC in 22. They are currently ranked 113 in the world, behind such powers as Haiti and Iceland. I hope the US ends up in their group.
There is nothing particularly shocking about the choice of Russia and Doha. FIFA follows a clear pattern: one world cup in Europe and the next outside Europe. And it has a strong bias towards large countries and regions which have never hosted the WC before. Among the 2018 contenders, Spain and England have hosted before and Russia is much larger than the Netherlands/Belgium which anyway belong to a region which has hosted many world cups. In 2022, the US, Japan and Korea have hosted before. Australia hasn’t but Quatar represents the Middle East which is a much bigger region as well as being soccer-crazy. It’s a good way of further boosting the sport in a big part of the world. Incidentally Doha hosted the 2006 Asian games which was a huge event. My guess is they will be more than ready by 2022.
It wasn't particularly realistic for the US to to expect to host the World Cup a mere 28 years after the last one. Aside from Mexico which only hosted the 86 world cup because Columbia pulled out, the smallest gap has been Germany between 74 and 2006. Germany is a leading football power as well as a large, developed country and the East German parts of the country had never hosted so that was quite reasonable. It was not likely that a second-string football country like the US would get a second cup so soon. The US will get its turn though, probably in the 2030's.It would take a lot of evidence to the contrary for me to not agree with you.
In December. It’s about 20C cooler, on average, at that time of year as opposed to any month the WC can be played in.
Well temperature is going to be an issue but infrastructure is not. If this air-conditioned stadium technology is feasible and I don’t see why not, I would bet on Doha pulling it off.
In 2006, the Qataris couldn’t even provide enough accommodation for the 13000 athletes and officials, having to hire some cruise ships for beds. Perhaps they are anticipating no travelling fans to a World Cup?
Was listening to the head of the Aussie bid on the radio earlier - he was utterly flabberghasted by the decision, and pretty much came right out and said it was a fix.
He said something along the lines of “how can a nation that’s 96% sand with 1.2m people expect to host a world cup with 3m visitors?”.