FIFA Falling to Racism or Becoming a Tool for 21st Century Imperialism
That was one short lived party! I remember how excited, and surprised, the announcement of the 2022 FIFA World Cup being awarded to Qatar had me. All sorts of fuzzy warm feelings started rolling up in my tummy, then I thought, REALLY?!? But apparently so has everyone else that is somebody in the Business of Futbol been thinking the same thing, because Qatar is on the verge of loosing the World Cup. (Has that ever happened before?)
Basically back in December 2010 Qatar won over the United States, Australia, Tokyo and South Korea to host the 2020 World Cup. Since then UEFA President Michel Platini been leading the bullpen, calling for the tournament to be switched to winter because its too darn hot in the desert kingdom during the summer. That call has finally lead to a head where all the competing interests lead to an outcome where Qatar will be stripped of its hosting award.
FIFA would be serving a raw deal to Qatar when it comes to the 2022 World Cup. Apparently, after having successfully won a bid for hosting the worlds most AMAZING tournament, Qatar is loosing it.
1. Its too hot to play in the desert sandbox during the summer;
According to Fox Sports “If a winter event is ruled out and summer has been established as too hot for Qatar, then a change of venue would be the only option.” And the thing is its the European Leagues that are leading this argument to change venues- Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said FIFA should consider switching the 2022 World Cup from Qatar rather than staging the event in winter to CNN Sports.
The decision since it was made, has had this heat factor playing out, with Sepp Blatter the head of FIFA telling CNN “You can cool down the stadiums but you can’t cool down the whole country and you can’t simply cool down the ambiance of a World Cup.” Apparently he hasn’t experienced Brazil during the Summer…its hot, humid and sticky. You can’t control the climate there either.
Finally if the games are held in the winter then they will most likely conflict with another major world sporting event- the Winter Olympics. IOC (International Olympic Committee) has already told FIFA whats up with that.
So summer is too hot, winter is too crowded in terms of sporting events, the only recourse left is to move the games from Qatar! The question is “why award the games to Qatar in the first place?” If its going to be too hot in 2022, it must therefore be too hot right now during the summer months as well, was FIFA that dull to the simple facts when it awarded the bid to Qatar?
2. Changing the Summer 2022 World Cup to a Winter period interferes with not only the Winter Olympics but money, money money.
The thing with why not have it in winter has to do more with money interests then just that bidders are required to host the World Cup in the Summer, again from Fox Sports:
- the normal league playing schedules all revolve around time off during the summer for international cups like UEFA and Champions and the World Cup ($)
- the contracting structures that exists requires teams to negotiate big money for players along with sponsors for players multi-million dollar advertisements campaigns ($$)
- finally, the $1 Billion America’s Fox Sports Network in conjunction with Telemundo paid for rights to the 2018 and 2022 world cup broadcasting rights ($$$$)- “Fox Sports, together with Telemundo (a subsidiary of the mighty NBC), bid $1bn for summer World Cups in 2018 and 2022. A Fox spokesman says: ‘Fox Sports bought the World Cup rights with the understanding they would be in the summer as they have been since the 1930s.’”
3. How did Qatar even get the bid, given these concerns prior to the awarding?- The response is that “There was greasing some palms, obviously!” or else a backwater Arab sheikhdom could never have gotten the games int he first place- no alcohol, no gambling, no women in skimpy clothes, public snogging, heck, no sexy-time in public places (or private) of hetro-lets forget homo- sort altogether.
Here the answer is simple- political pressure, money interests and political favors! Sepp Blatter, when asked about political pressure to award the 2022 bid to Qatar by Der Spiegel said “Yes, definitely there was direct political influences,” Blatter said. “European leaders recommended to their voting members to vote for Qatar, because they have great economic interests with this country.”
Obviously a Muslim majority country could not get the World Cup without extortion and some sort of arm wrangling, that would create a fair playing field where no one on the FIFA committee would award to a country that can not absolutely hold the World Cup, and whats more its too hot there!
The critics of the 2022 games have made it clear that there is no alternative that works for them. That Qatar spending billions of dollars to build stadiums that have ginormous air cooling systems is not enough to cope with the heat, because this is the dessert heat which isn’t normal to other types of heat. That Qatar went through a bidding process successfully like other venues, obviously its a bunch of oil rich sheikhs so they have money to spare in all the right places. Worse the detractors say that if the games move ahead as planned, in the summer or the alternative winter games, there will be a call to boycott the 2022 World Cup with A-Class teams not competing the in the games.
I mean nothing, NOTHING, satisfies the critics of Qatar 2022 from what I am reading. To find compromise in one quarter only creates even more pained howls from another quarter. All these added up say that Qatar was the wrong choice for 2022 World Cup so lets just change locations. That reeks of Imperialism and racism, especially since the majority of the kavitching is coming from Europe and Fox News. So during the first week of October we will find out whether this maelstrom put to rest or if its pushed off for another few months or couple years, since there are 9 years until the games. Until then we can watch Brazil host the next World Cup!
Here is what the Qatari 2022 World Cup might have looked like.
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