According to this article, Qatar is backing down on their promise to build air conditioned stadiums, because such stadiums are too expansive. In other news, bears shit in the woods.
The only reason Qatar got the bid in the first place is because they promised pristine 26 degree playing fields. Well, that and oil money bribes. And now they’re backing down and promising “shading seats and using traditional Arabic methods for ventilation”. I’m sure shade and traditional Arabic methods for ventilation work very well for small groups of, say, 2,000 Arabic men who are used to the heat. How well will it work for 50,000 tourists from cold places? And what happens if there’s a heat wave? At least we’re lucky that based on the Asia Cup’s performance, no one is going to go to a game in Qatar in the first place.
It’s probably for the best. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if the air conditioner broke down during the final? Thousands and thousands of spectators would be crammed into a confined space in 60 degree weather, and of course, they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the stadium until the king got out safely.
I’d like to think FIFA will eventually come it senses, but it’s FIFA. With 4 years less time to get things in order, I’m curious if Russia will be able to get things done for 2018. Nevermind that country’s love of foreigners playing for its teams (specifically those from South America and Africa), having a transportation system reliably installed in 6 years to cover the biggest country in the world seems difficult.
What I would like to see:
2018: USA
2022: England
2026: China - not that I love the communist government, but I’m realistic enough to know there’s a lot of money to be made there for FIFA, and the Asian Federation may not care for losing Qatar as host.
Maybe switch it to England, China, and then the US. Regardless, it’s a joke that Qatar got it in the first place, and that Sepp Blatter is still in charge. What a horrible fuck he is.
Can’t see the world football community accepting England and the USA, two countries they see as very similar, in immediate succession. China would seem to be a plausible alternative to Qatar, if sense prevails.
Re Russia, I think you’re alluding to racism among the fans there? I’m confident the authorities will clamp down hard on that, at least during the tournament. Seems to be more of a club-level thing anyway. As for transport, don’t they have reasonable infrastructure already? Most games will be in western Russia, I imagine.
The whole thing with FIFA and Sepp Blatter is a joke, but the bottom line is this: the World Cup will be played, there will be a winner, and in 20 years all of this will be a historical sidenote, mattering only to the people that award future World Cups as an example of what not to do.
Look at it this way: when it turns into a colossal fiasco there will be a wholesale change in leadership that FIFA, corrupt though it is, will not be able to stop. Problem solved. And really, do you think it will ever be solved without an unmitigated disaster to precipitate the necessary changes?
The players will adapt, maybe a few of them will have to be pulled due to the heat, a few people will die because they didn’t have the sense to stay at home and watch it on the TV, and heads will roll. Never again will they try to put on a World Cup in 140 degree heat.
If you’re playing at night, why would you care if it’s covered? It’s not as if they’re expecting it to rain in Qatar anytime soon.
I guess you could have all the games after dark, but it’s still freaking hot down there at night, at least it was in Saudi Arabia, never been to Qatar. That doesn’t really fit with television for maximum global viewership, though.
Well, covered in the sense that the cover itself is full of spotlights that can simulate daytime. I suppose also a cover could help regulate the temperature so it doesn’t get uncomfortably chilly, as desert climates often do at night.
I don’t think chilly will be a problem… As you can see from the attached link, the average low in Doha, Qatar, in June, is above 80 degrees F. July is warmer still. I’ve never been to the Persian (Arabian) Gulf region, but playing around with historical data, it looks like it averages 90 F or so around 8:00 PM, with widely varying humidity. (Edit: or what Airman Doors wrote.) Do football teams normally play in those conditions, and if so, how does it affect their performance?
And this is at night. Daytime temps look to be easily in the 100 F + range in June and July. Maybe you can play football in those conditions, but I’d think it’d have a great effect on teams’ fitness.
What you say makes sense, but the Qatar thing really does raise FIFA lunacy to an unprecedented level. They have never awarded a World Cup twelve years in advance before, and I think that some FIFA big-wigs have tacitly admitted that awarding two World Cups in one bidding process was a mistake, opening the thing up to even more horse trading than usual.
I wouldn’t like to bet on whether the Qatar World Cup will actually go ahead. I suspect that something under that name will happen at the appointed time, but possibly not with the full participation of all the leading football nations.
The World Cup’s glory days are behind it, anyway. It was once the pinnacle of football, but the tournament has lost its mystique. These days we already know most of the players because we see them every week in the various major club tournaments. It is no longer possible to be amazed by a national team full of brilliant players that you have never heard of.
Yeah, I can’t agree with that either. Sure, we know a lot of the players by now, but we’re still getting to see the best players in the world in a team with other world class players all in one team - and under what’s going to be the greatest possible pressure in their careers. And you can still be amazed by teams punching above their weight, like New Zealand or South Korea have been doing of late, or teams with a great reputation managing to utterly destroy themselves, like France.
But you get greater concentrations of the world’s best players in the top club sides. Barcelona, Real Madrid et al are better than nearly all national sides, and probably a match for any of them, were it not for the fact that many of their players are in those national sides.
To illiustrate the point about how the World Cup is less exotic these days, compare 1982 to 2006:
Some notable players from the 1982 torunament: Rossi, Socrates, Boniek, Rummenigge, Platini. None of these players had played outside their domestic leagues (although some would, later in their careers). The only opportunities outside of the World Cup for, say, a British fan to see these players were the relatively rare occasions when an English or Scottish club played one of their teams in the European Cup or what have you. We never got to see the South American players at all. African players were basically unheard of.
In 2006, the official team of the tournament included these players: Henry, Cannavaro, Carvalho, Klose, Crespo, Zé Roberto. All playing in Europe, most of them familiar to even casual football fans, seen regularly on network TV, and all watchable week-in, week-out to keener fans with a suitable cable TV subscription.
Am I the only one who thinks that Russia is the most likely to pull off a reasonably well-run WC in the next 3 cycles? Brazil will probably get the stadiums up in time, but transportation will be completely, irrevocably fucked, and miserable for those of us planning to attend. And Qatar? Yeah, well…whoever’s running FIFA after gangsters gun down Blatter will have to think seriously about moving that one.
Ok. I still don’t see how more exposure of the worlds best, equals less intrigue, when they all play together.
Using your comparison between 82 & 06, we have added as regular competitors in: South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, Australia, and the U.S. Countries with populations who back in 82, really didn’t care one way if the other about the WC. To say that that it is in a downward spiral, seems to me more “back in the good old days” type of thinking then anything else.
I also want to add that I have been referring to both the Men and Women’s World Cups. It just dawned on me that this might not be the case for everyone else.