So Qatar is too hot in summer after all.
And at 40-50C in the shade, who can disagree?
Even if the stadia are cool enough, the outside won't be, and the prospect of a
million beer-hungry fans stumbling out into such a furnace in desperate search
of a cool lager does not bear thinking about.
"I support definitely, definitely,"
Sepp Blatter said, "to play in winter here, to play when the climate is
appropriate."
The FIFA President's support for a January Togel Online World
Cup in 2022 appears clear enough. The temperatures in the summer months in
Qatar are far more oppressive than their anti-alcohol or anti-gay laws, that is
for sure. Playing in the Middle East's winter makes sense therefore, when the
thermometer rarely rises above 25c by day and has an average low of a pleasant
13C.
And Qatar has already successfully hosted
big-name games of football outdoors at that time of year. But avoiding the
sweltering summer and the need for expensive and unproven technology has a
serious downside to it - a sandstorm brewing in club boardrooms across Europe
all of FIFA's making and the spectre of an almighty club v country conflict on
the horizon. Blackpool manager Ian Holloway, famous for his juicy quips to the
press, was typical of the domestic reaction when he launched a fiery tirade at
the possibility of the football season closing down for two months to make up
for FIFA's initial error.
Holloway likened switching the World Cup to the
European winter as akin to changing the date of Christmas.
"So we'll just change everything cos your
weather's really hot," he said. "Brilliant! I mean come on, what's
going on? What happened to the air-conditioned arenas. Bit too expensive 25 of
them was it or what?"
It was Franz Beckenbauer who first publicly
floated the idea of switching the month of the tournament, closely followed by
nods of approval from UEFA President Michel Platini, FIFA General Secretary
Jerome Valcke and then Blatter himself: This hitherto unthinkable idea now has
legs.
FIFA's own technical evaluation of the hosting
bids, even though it was blithely ignored by the Executive Committee, marked
Qatar as "sofa set online with price" on account of its hellishly hot summer - "a
potential health risk for players, officials, the FIFA family and
spectators".
As it stood, the arena temperature would still
have only been 27C at its coolest. But clearly the assurances that
(carbon-neutral) air conditioning, powerful enough to cool a dozen big stadia
and presumably 32 more for the finalists to train in, will be ready in time for
2022, are seriously doubted in Zurich, only two weeks after they made the
controversial choice of a Middle Eastern summer host.
Now the vote is over, Blatter has also mentioned
moving the Qatar World Cup into other Middle Eastern countries, surely against
the spirit, if not the rules, of the bidding campaign. While staging matches in
neighbouring countries such as the United Arab Emirates would not be
disastrous, the move from June to January potentially is as it places the
international game in its most direct opposition yet with the clubs they have been
trying to placate for the past two decades.
Clubs are so far aghast at the prospect of
having their leagues shut down by FIFA for a two-month hiatus and watching
their best players come back jaded and/or injured mid-season. The risk FIFA
runs is rebellion against its plans from the big European teams, leaving the
governing body to think the unthinkable, recall the 2022 vote and select the
USA, the runner-up, as host instead.
stand-off could increase the already floated
idea of a breakaway from FIFA led by major European nations, or at the very
least, herald big concessions in the form of exemption from friendlies for top
players or compensation paid by FIFA to clubs for borrowing their star men for
international duty.
Instead of global harmony appearing around the
2022 World Cup decision, awarding the tournament to Qatar has created global
warming of a different kind, and there appears no ready solution besides
cancellation of the hosting. It's another fine mess from Sepp & Co.
As Henry Winter commented today in the Sunday
Telegraph:
"FIFA is not just lobbing a pebble into the
club waters, but a huge chunk of granite hewn from the Matterhorn."
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