Qatar really, we talking about Qatar here, hosting the World Cup not a game not a game not a game, we talking about the World Cup man, Qatar, the host of the game that I love, it's most coveted prize that happens once every four years, Qatar - World Cup 2022 hosts as voted by you FIFA selection committee.
That was my initial thought when Slate texted me this morning to let me know the tiny little nation that juts out off Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf like Cape Cod does off Massachusetts. By the way can you spot it on the map, if I hadn't given you all the hints above it would've kind of been like playing "Where's Waldo."
Unfortunately the night before when I was having beers with another one of my good buddies, a huge soccer fan as well, while watching Duke kick the crap out of Michigan State, I told him I had a really bad feeling about the draw as far as the U.S. was concerned.
For some reason when I had heard that Qatar was telling the FIFA selection committee that it could regulate the temperature of its stadiums, the tone in which reporters were depicting FIFA's thoughts on that "magical technology" gave me insight that it was enough to put Qatar over the top.
Apparently it did if you believe this nugget of info from Ravi Ubha's ESPN column --
"So what went wrong for the U.S.? Given FIFA's thinking, it's hard to know. Perhaps there was no wow factor, an area in which Qatar prospered with its ultramodern stadiums of the future."
I also thought Australia would give the U.S. a run for its money because of the way soccer is developing in that country -- its essentially on par with where the U.S. was 15 years ago having a relatively new professional soccer league that is not quite at the level of Major League Soccer (although the LA Galaxy did lose to a team from Australia last week) -- and also because of the fact Australia has never hosted a World Cup and has a great infrastructure to be able to do so.
So no I am not shocked although if you have the time here are a few stories to describe how completely bogus the decision was. They map out a lot of the discrepancies and senseless logic that went into these decisions on who was to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups:
Let's just break down a few things about Qatar itself.
It has never qualified for the World Cup or even come close and although I don't put a whole lot of stock into the FIFA rankings it's pretty telling that they currently sit at #113. They are not good, period.
The country is very rich, last year it had a nearly $12 billion profit thanks to its oil and natural gas industry.
As a nation it has a population about the general size of the greater metropolitan area of Las Vegas or 1.5 million people and is about the size geographically of Connecticut. And not to be an alarmist, but let's look at the region of the world Qatar is located - directly next to Saudi Arabia, which has huge problems with terrorist camps, just a small body of water away from Iran, and in an area where pirating is still very prevalent, that sounds lovely to me. At least it's borders are small, so hopefully it's tough to get into.
As for infrastructure only 3 of the 12 stadiums it needs to minimally host the World Cup are built, just nine to go, and when they are built they will all be within 20 miles of each other. Talk about a traveling nightmare, I hope the public transportation is amazing. And by the way Qatar also plans to sell off and dismantle much of the stadiums it builds after the tournament is over according to this article from the NY Times Blog FiveThirtyEight:
"And if the downside to the Qatari bid was high, its upside is also questionable. The country has only 1.5 million people, according to the World Bank, but most are expatriates or migrant workers: the citizen population is closer to 200,000. Although Qatar might be thought of as staging the tournament on behalf of the Middle East in general, the region itself also has a fairly small population — about 350 million as the area is traditionally defined. And much of the infrastructure that Qatar develops for the tournament will be superfluous: all 12 of the stadiums that it constructs will be partially dismantled after the tournament (their spare parts, Qatar says, will be shipped off to developing countries after the World Cup)."
And here's the greatest kicker, or blind being pulled over your eyes, as I mentioned before Qatar claims it has the technology to be able to regulate its temperatures inside its stadiums through some sort of air conditioning mechanism to what I have heard will be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, a relatively pleasant temperature for a game considering its summer time.
However, let's just remember this is also the BIGGEST TOURNAMENT IN THE WORLD. Sorry for the capital letters, but I felt like it needed the emphasis. This is a month-and-a-half long tourney from the start of June until middle July and we're talking about the potential for millions of fans to flock to this tiny nation. Can Qatar also regulate the temperatures of its downtown city or cities - I'm not sure that it has more than one major city by the way - because it's going to be pretty frigin hot out there too. In fact Qatar averages temps of 115 at that time of year, AVERAGES! Yikes. So when they're packing all these people into this tiny country like sardines, and everyone is stuck in traffic, we're going to be cooking the sardines too. Tasty.
Does that sound like a great pitch to host the 2022 World Cup or what? I think so. Lest I forget that Qatar was also the only "high risk" nation assessed by FIFA's governing body itself, the only of the nine other countries that were in contention for both the 2018 and 2022 cups.
Oh and you want me to believe this uber wealthy nation didn't bribe other FIFA selection committee representatives as the BBC uncovered about the Tahiti representative and the Nigeria representative -- coughing-noise (BULL-SHIT)-under my breath.
Yes I understand the Middle East has never hosted a World Cup and 350 million people live in that region of the world, but Qatar was not the answer by a long shot. If you're looking for the right nation it has got to be either one of two countries - Turkey, which I understand is now a part of the European Union, but still is technically in the Middle East region or Egypt, which I again understand geographically is in the continent of Africa, but for some strange reason on this latest vote of the Executive Committee was a part of the Asian voting group with Japan, Qatar, South Korea, and Thailand. Those two countries are passionate about soccer, those two countries have great national soccer teams who could do well in the tournament, those two countries are big enough to be able to handle the demands of a major tournament, those two countries will feel more of a lasting impact on growing the game of soccer in their own countries after the tournament is over.
You don't really need me to explain why the U.S. would the best candidate to host its second World Cup extravaganza. I think most of the points are pretty obvious just looking at the growth in the game since the 1994 Cup came to the states really exemplifies that point as does the fact that we are without equivocation the greatest sporting nation in the world and that cannot be argued. Virtually 80 percent of the world's wealthiest franchises reside in the states with amazing facilities that could have gone towards hosting an amazing tournament. And if you are trying to grow what is already the World's biggest game, why not continue to do so in a market that has shown signs with a young growing foundation of fans but still has the potential for huge expansion. Need I say more.
