I’m quite annoyed at myself for being so angry about it. I should have long since got use to the fact that FIFA is quite possibly the most corrupt sporting body on the planet.
We went asking for Jack Warner’s backing. JACK bloody WARNER! a c##t of the highest order.
Lo and behold he went back on his word like the snake he is.
If technical dossiers and presentations mean nothing then have the stones to say so. If it is just a competition of who can make the most unrefusable offer then fine. Sod 'em. I wish them all the worst possible luck and as much failure as they can handle.
Though I don’t particularly mind Doha getting the Cup, ideally Turkey should have been the first Middle Eastern country to host the World Cup. I wish they had a serious bid in 2022. Apparently they were planningto bid in 2026 but I can’t see that having much legs now that Doha has 22. Obviously Turkey would have been a much more suitable country because of size, football tradition and climate. I imagine the Turks are pretty devastated by the Doha win.
Shocking result in my opinion, Russia I can sort of understand being a huge nation that has never held it before but Qatar is a plain joke. FIFA must be wetting themselves laughing behind closed doors. Can anyone explain to me why Qatar got fewer votes in the second round than the first, did one of the officials forget who bribed him the most money? England getting just 2 votes is something that can only be treated correctly in the pit, I imagine it is no coincidence that it was an English TV programme that exposed FIFA to be corrupt as hell.
Qatar have impressive climate-controlled stadia (or will have) but what about the training grounds? What about the viewing areas for the millions of football fans set to swarm the country, I hope they build more hospitals as well as 7,000 hotels to cope.
Yes, but the IOC got their arses kicked for corruption after the Salt lake city fiasco and they cleaned their act up somewhat.
And at least the man that runs F1 (Bernie Ecclestone) is quite open about it being about the money (his money more specifically)
And London bribery? there was probably as much excessive shmoozing as they could get
away with but probably not as much outright bribery and threat as Russia and Qatar are used to and capable of.
Someone on another site mentioned that FIFA rules state that no more than two World Cup stadia can be located in the same metro area. Well, that poses a serious problem for Qatar, since their third-largest city has a population of about 31,000. Has there been any clarification on this issue, at least?
I can assume there will never be any clarification on why FIFA deemed Qatar’s summer weather to be a health risk to fans and players but yet that was conveniently forgotten in the voting.
Qatar is going to be a disaster. What a fucking joke. How long is Sepp Blatter in charge for anyway? Until he quits? He seems to have been fucking up football for years.
I feel exactly the same way. I couldn’t give a shit this morning, despite my great love of football, now I am almost furious. What was the point of this dog and pony show when they just go and pick the worst possible country, the least able to actually host the world cup?
Yes. Words fail me.
Wikileaks reported a USA ambassador to Russia saying it was impossible to distinguish between the government and the mafia. Putin decides he doesn’t need to show up and I wonder why, deal already done perhaps?
Seems the world’s “Mafia state” and the oil-lubed, misogynists are the winners - the fed up, corruption alleging Poms and the hapless Aussies the losers.
Should be interesting to see what the Ruskis will do to combat half the foreign football fans getting kidnapped by unemployed, vodka soused, ex KGB types, and likewise, how the Qataris will reconcile their strident and archaic alcohol laws with the likes of bon vivant Pommy and Kraut supporters(!)… much less whether ‘lowly females’ will even be permitted to attend the matches! Will bikinis be prohibited in the 50’C heat!
The more I think about this, the more time I spend laughing. Just to be clear, I can just about justify the Russian decision but the Qatar decision is absolutely hilarious.
The things that are making me laugh about the Qatar decision have been covered in some of the other posts but just to be clear:
The weather - WTF? Whether they are going to air condition the stadia or not is almost irrelevant. Who is going to want to go to the World Cup in that sort of heat? You can’t spend all your time in the stadium and it will be oppressively hot. You can’t hold the World Cup at any other time than June/July, so the idea that the weather is not going to be an issue is pretty silly. It may not be for the players but the tourists are going to struggle
The alcohol situation - no problem with picking a Muslim country for this at all. But I think Budweiser have a long term deal to sponsor the World Cup - presumably FIFA just decided “sod it”. I’m sure they’ll find another sponsor. But if I am a business, I’d think twice about it now - what’s to say that FIFA put the World Cup in a region where I can’t sell my stuff/can’t advertise? After all, they have introduced that uncertainty now.
The size of the country - how the hell are they going to fit 3m people into the country? Where are the hotels going to be based? Or is the idea that it is stupidly hot by design to deter visitors to the country? No one comes to the World Cup - no problem with hotel rooms!
Football facilities - where is everyone going to train? In the air conditioned stadia? If so, that’s going to knacker the playing surfaces but good.
Qatar will have a berth at the World Cup - unless they are going to buy in some players (see their policy on “generating” world class track running teams), everyone is going to want to be in their group. The flip side is that it basically guarantees an utterly ridiculous group of death in 2022, in which it is perfectly possible that one of the nations with a lucrative TV market goes home early.#
It’s just so perverse. In a weird way I actually admire FIFA’s sheer brass neck in doing something so obviously stupid that it immediately raises alarm bells about corruption.
I think I can see FIFA’s train of thought (and I use the word ‘thought’ quite wrongly) here. The people actually giving money to FIFA are fine, the fans in the stadiums and the fans at home (justifying networks giving FIFA huge sums of money for broadcast rights) won’t struggle with the heat at all. It’s just the people who aren’t actively giving FIFA money for the duration of the game that get to fry in the desert. Once you pony up some money and buy a ticket FIFA will care about your well-being, at least for the duration of the game, after that you get kicked out into the desert again.
The USA got three votes in the first round, which I presume were from the three CONCACAF members on the executive committee. In the second round they got five votes, and I’m guessing one of the two new votes came from Australia, and the other from the guy who just got out of bed with the Qatari-provided hookers and blow who forgot who he was supposed to be voting for. (Qatar actually lost one vote in the second round.)
After a visit from some royal guardsmen, the hungover guy remembers to vote for Qatar, and the two Japan votes go to USA. At this point, the Europeans realize that the fix is in, and they decide to completely fuck over FIFA by actually giving the World Cup to a blisteringly hot piece of sand that bans booze and represses women.
Yeah, that’s my therory and I’m sticking with it.
Seriously, if they’re going to ban the hot South American chicks with the massive cleavage, just maybe the World Cup thing isn’t for me.
If the world’s sporting community was bemused by Salt Lake City’s arcane liquor laws during the Olympics, I can’t wait until the world’s soccer community gets to Qatar.
