World Cup 2018/2022

[EKBATAN]

YA stupid arabs, lets change EVERYTHING in the world leagues so that we can attend ur dumb WC in winter

they expect everyone to bend for them

[Demis-11]

horrible, and top teams should boycott it, it screws up the organization of domestic leagues, I also think this would really take away the Winter Olympics hype in 2022 (and the Winter Olympics could always use a helping hand)

[PouriaAkaBarut]

Its don't see it happening that they take the WC out of their hand , they are just gonna force them to do it in the summer and ask them to advance there technology for the stadiums !

[HuSsAiN]

whats higher european clubs or what fifa says?

FIFA has more authority, and they are so 'keen' into the WINTER world cup

stupid

[KC McElroy]

Two opposing views below while using the Asian Cup as a measuring stick..

http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news;...ro-qatar012211

When soccer’s governing body made its boneheaded decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar back in December, it didn’t realize it would only take a few weeks for the first tangible signs of its folly to be exposed.

Crowds in Qatar have been disappointing during Asian Cup competition.
Or maybe it did, and just didn’t care. Such is the autocracy and introspection in FIFA, that muddled and twisted organization that runs the beautiful game as it sees fit, apparently without much consideration for the billions who support it.

Either way, FIFA looks more foolish than ever this weekend, over the choice of Qatar – a miniscule and sweltering state in the Middle East – which was picked ahead of a small collection of more legitimate candidates, the United States among them.

Qatar is in the midst of hosting the 2011 Asian Cup, that region’s biannual continental championship. With 11 years to go before the greatest show in sports lands on Qatar’s doorstep it is far too early to call this a trial run. But it is a verifiable indicator of what to expect all those years from now.
And the signs are not particularly good.

If we are to believe that the Middle East is soccer’s next great boom region, then it would be nice to see some, you know, people watching what is actually a pretty decent Asian event that boasts some quality players and attractive play.

Instead, the Asian Cup has been played in front of embarrassingly sparse crowds. Fourteen of the 24 matches in group play saw attendance of less than 10,000. Lowest of all was the 2,022 who saw the contest between Japan, one of the pre-tournament favorites, and Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Qatar just 50 miles from where the game was staged ( ). If Middle Easterners, as FIFA is swift to tell us, are captivated by international soccer, then it is only from the air-conditioned comfort of their homes and television screens.

“Of course, we need to improve,” Asian Football Confederation competitions director Tokuaki Suzuki told AFP. “If all matches were a full house, it would be better.”

No kidding. That the average attendance has just managed to creep above 10,000 is largely thanks to the bigger audiences that witnessed the Qatar team’s matches, and those of India, which has a large expat presence in the capital, Doha.

For all FIFA’s smiling assertions that their 2022 decision was about growth and development and the crossing of new frontiers, the suspicion that it boiled down to money will never go away. Qatar’s ruling family is one of the wealthiest on the planet thanks to the natural reserves of oil that it controls. Its budget for the bidding process was astronomical, with soccer luminaries such as Zinedine Zidane recruited to assist at great expense.

Assurances of air-conditioned stadiums were presented in an attempt to assuage concerns about the temperatures, and since the vote, the likelihood has emerged that the tournament will be shifted to winter time to reduce the impact of heat on the players and fans.

A further helping hand was given by FIFA’s internal decision – not revealed until after the process had been completed – that both the 2018 and 2022 tournaments should go to countries that had never previously staged the event.

For 2022, that stiffed the United States, Japan and South Korea, effectively leaving Qatar in a straight fight with Australia, which was taken care of in the first round thanks to strategic voting that left it eliminated.

So Qatar ended up with the rights and faces an ongoing battle for credibility that cannot be fixed by a mere wave of a checkbook. The ideal of building interest in a fresh region is not a bad one, but first there needs to be some natural platform of interest to work with.

On the evidence of the past two weeks, Qatar and the Middle East just don’t have it. The billions that will be invested in stadiums and infrastructure over the next decade means there is every chance Qatar can stage a decent tournament, and the issue of crowds is one which will be fixed by the swathes of travelling fans who journey to World Cups.

But the answer to whether it is a deserving host, and whether FIFA made the right choice, is still no – perhaps more so than ever.

[KC McElroy]

And some views from a math genius! Hussain should forward his post to them about the single doored stadiums and free ticket giveaways to unsuccessfully boost attendence to see if that qualifies as criticism.

http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=reu-asianqatar

AFC president Mohammed Bin Hammam has praised Qatar’s hosting of the on-going Asian Cup saying the experience bodes well for their staging of the World Cup finals in 2022.

“It’s been an extremely well organised event by Qatar,” Bin Hammam, the Qatari president of the Asian Football Confederation told the tournament’s website (www.the-afc.com).

“Although it is 12 years between now and 2022 ( 2022-2011=11), it was a very good rehearsal for that competition.”

The tiny gas-rich Persian Gulf emirate has been in the spotlight since it was awarded the right to host ther world’s biggest single sporting event by world governing body FIFA last month.

Organisers, however, have suffered little criticism for their hosting of the 16-team premier Asian tournament which concludes with the final at the Khalifa Stadium on Saturday.

Apart from some low attendances in the opening group stage matches and other minor problems, the opening weeks of the tournament went largely without a hitch.

The main difference between this tournament, and the World Cup in 2022 will be that at the moment the World Cup is scheduled to be played in the summer months when the temperatures can sore to higher than 50 Celsius (122 fahrenheit).

Debate has already started about the viability of staging the finals in such hot weather or whether it should be moved to the winter with far more agreeable temperatures, but no decision on that is likely to be taken in the immediate future.

[HuSsAiN]

This guy is too funny! How is he the president of AFC? I got a feeling he will be president of FIFA in the future.

[KC McElroy]

Yup, by all accounts it will be a smash hit preparation stage for World Cup 2022 until it's moved to a different country.

http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?...ournalistsheld

A Swiss television network says it’s contacting FIFA after two journalists were detained in Qatar while filming a report on the 2022 World Cup host.

Radio Television Suisse says the incident was a “serious violation of press freedom.”

RTS says reporter Christophe Cerf and cameraman Yvan Thorimbert were stopped April 1, handcuffed and interrogated at police stations in Mesaieed and Wakra.

The network says a judge in Doha fined the journalists, confiscated their camera and stopped them from leaving the emirate.

Switzerland’s ambassador in Kuwait intervened and the pair left with their camera after 13 days.

RTS says its journalists had previous assurances from Qatari diplomats in Geneva that they could film freely.

[PFS]

^^
That will never happen since Bin Hamman will become FIFA prez.