So after handing the 2022 tournament to Qatar on the proviso they would build air conditioned stadia and artificial clouds , Blatter seems prepared to do a volte face. No consideration for the supporters though in his proposed festival of football. Moving the WC to a northern hemisphere winter, will raise the ire of clubs in Europe and may lead to the relocation of the 2022 tournament. This will be discussed when the FIFA executive committee meets this October. "The executive committee will certainly follow my proposal. Then we will have dealt with the topic for good." Temperatures can hit 50C in Qatar, with games scheduled to be played in air-conditioned stadiums. But Blatter said: "The World Cup must be a festival of the people. But for it to be such a festival, you can't play football in the summer. "You can cool down the stadiums but you can't cool down the whole country and you can't simply cool down the ambience of a World Cup. The players must be able to play in the best conditions to play a good World Cup." Speaking via video link, the head of Qatar's organising committee, Hassan Al-Thawadi, told the conference in Austria: "If it's a wish of the football community to have the World Cup in winter, then we are open to that." Blatter said his change of heart had followed medical information about the effects of the heat on players. "There has been a fresh medical investigation into what it would be like to play football there in the summer and we have to take into account the health, not of the spectators, but of the players," he told Sky Germany. Moving the World Cup to the winter would significantly impact on the the European leagues. Many leagues outside Britain have a winter break but they would need a hiatus of at least six weeks to accommodate national teams preparing for, and playing at, the World Cup finals. "We have to have the courage - that is Fifa's executive committee - to play this World Cup in the winter and to start to work out now what impact this will have on the international calendar," Blatter added. "It would only be for one year, afterwards you'd be back to the normal routine. But I will advocate that." Qatar defeated bids from South Korea, Japan, Australia and the United States to win a ballot of Fifa's 22 executive members for the right to host the 2022 World Cup. Meanwhile, Blatter said Brazil might have been the wrong choice to host the 2014 World Cup if the tournament is affected by the wave of protests seen at the Confederations Cup last month. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets expressing their anger over the costs to stage the World Cup and demanding better public services. "If this happens again we have to question whether we made the wrong decision awarding the hosting rights," Blatter said. "We didn't do a political debriefing, but we did emphasise the fact of this social unrest being there for the entire duration of the Confederations Cup. "The government is now aware that next year the World Cup shouldn't be disturbed." He added: "It's not we who have to learn lessons from the protests in Brazil; politics in Brazil have to do that." Good news for the general football fan and hopefully everyone in the EBU. FIFA and UEFA in their never ending quest for more mammon have tried to get certain matches in each tournament made PPV. However a court ruling in Europe has thrown out their claim again.....:sign15: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23288211 A small victory for the ordinary punter. Blatter and his cronies will have to line their pockets and indeed the clubs who send 'their' players to these events from elsewhere.
Apparently the 2022 World Cup will now be played in England, with Hillsborough, The City Ground, Elland Road and the Crisp Bowl being used as the 4 stadiums, as they represent the MASSIVE clubs in England.
We can but hope...... Hope BP make sure they don't pollute the Arctic in the mean time so they can have enough dollars to send to Switzerland.......
To be fair to FIFA, NOBODY was saying at the time that Qatar was too hot. This discovery about it being hot there has only just been discovered by the latest, top scientists, so it's good to see Blatter pragmatically reacting to it on the hoof.
If it is handed to England, and Leicester is indeed a host city, the club has always said that in such an event the stadium was originally designed to accommodate an extra 10-20,000 seats. This will of course saddle us with yet more seats we can't fill and plunge us further into our debt-induced tailspin. Its no bad thing spreading the games around though, Leicester, Villa and Forest offer the most viable locations in the Midlands to host games.
In almost 22 years on this earth I haven't left the Midlands once, so I feel thoroughly unqualified to comment on any other potential hosting areas.
How the hell did they win the right to host the world cup? I can just about understand Russia. I still dont think it will be there!
It was a moronic decision to move it to Qatar in the first place, and now that moronic decision is necessitating more moronic decisions. A new study shows that athletes wouldn't be able to perform to their best in the heat of the Qatar summer; who would have thought? Amazing revelation. Blatter is an utter imbecile and the sooner he is gone from world football, the better. Unfortunately whoever comes after him will likely be just as useless. If this Winter World Cup comes off, it will wreak havoc with the domestic schedule. Either the preseason from the prior year will be cut short, or the pre-season of the following year will be cut short. 6 weeks of no league football during the middle of a season is beyond stupid in busy leagues (although we'll be an established Prem team by then anyway, so fewer games to play than in the Championship).
In the organisation I work for, if we contract a company to do something and then change a critical part of the requirement after contract let, we'd be taken to high court in minutes by companies that lost the bid. FIFA changes the WC to Winter after Qatar win the bid. Surely Australia, Japan, S.Korea and USA can launch a legal challenge on the key element of their bid being a Summer event?
FIFA gives the world cups to countries so that the WC can leave a legacy there and will have a lasting impact. Qatar have already stated that out of the 12 stadiums needed, 9 will be newly built, with only 9 being renovated I think. They have ALSO said that because the country is so small and there is so small a demand for football, the newly built stadiums will be dismantled after the WC. Now, if they are dismantling the stadiums after the WC, that proves their isn't enough demand in the first place, meaning there is no legacy to be left and absolutely zero point in them hosting it, so WHY has Qatar been awarded the WC? Absolutely riddled with corruption. A scandalous joke. I imagine this is how other fans in the league feel about us.
Not just is but other EBU countries. Belgium's state broadcaster I believe has also retained the rights to every game. Up yours Blatter.......:]]
