Was Qatar a wrong decision for 2022 World Cup?

[karter]

I personally don't think Qatar was the right place. Here are some good points I found out :

1.5 million people live in Qatar, but most of them are migrant workers. The true population is closer to 200,000 – smaller than St. Petersburg, Florida.

Qatar's team never qualified for a World Cup

The temperature during games will reach 50 degrees celcius .

To host the games, Qatar will have to construct 12 brand new stadiums within a 20 mile radius. They will be dismantled after the tournament.

Qatar is a strict nation. Homosexuality is punishable by five years in prison.

Qatar hosted 2006 Asian Games , one of the worst hosted games ever.



Here's how people reacted on twitter :

Pretty sure today proves that FIFA is even more corrupt than we’ve ever given them credit for.

Qatar needs to thank its special consultant for the 2022 WC bid: Cam Newton’s father.

And… all the rumors about insane bribes being thrown around to get the 2022 World Cup have been proven correct! Wow.

This is Qatar (You can see the Size) and the location of the stadiums which will be built

The Reactions

[Callum.]

Think it's going to be fine. Stadiums should looks nice, got all the money and that.

[GommeInc]

This seems like a huge over-reaction. FIFA have stated for years they want to bring the World Cup (and football) to the World, so they target countries who are never really heard of in the football world to host it. I honestly don't know why that fact goes over the heads of football fans :/ The whole "bribe" argument is a huge joke.

[Hecktix]

I am looking forward to seeing how many British football fans get arrested over there tbh.

[:LUFC:]

I am looking forward to seeing how many British football fans actually go there.

[Jordy]

The worst thing about it is the climate which I don't think you've pointed out. During the summer it becomes one of the hottest regions on earth, people don't go outside during the day and many infact migrate over the summer it's so warm. To try play football in a Qatar summer is unthinkable, at the very least it needs to be moved to winter but even so it'll be ridiculously warm.

Personally I disagree with FIFA's approach of going to the middle east, I don't think there's much money to be made etc and I'm yet to see what holding it in South Africa has done for the fortunes of Africa.

That's 3/4 World Cups in non-footballing nations (South Africa, Russia and Qatar), thankfully 2014 is in Brazil. I also think it's probably all corrupt and dodgy, FIFA has shown to be like that many times and it was totally unnecessary to announce two World Cups at once.

[Inseriousity.]

I have relatives (my auntie and uncle) who live there and it's really strict. She also pointed out a newspaper article out to us recently of a smashed up car. The article says that there was a crash because the driver was driving with his feet and reading a newspaper. She said this was the norm and people drive around while looking at laptops: they're crazy drivers!

Despite all that though, even though the countries have problems, China managed to host the Olympics without any problems, South Africa hosted the World Cup without any problems and I imagine Qatar will do the same.

[Jacob]

I don't think it would be as bad as you make it out to be. Picking a destination for the World Cup isn't a one minute thing. With all the negatives mentioned that would obviously put everyone off so I think we should all just accept that it's going to Qatar and look at the positive perspective. Although I do agree with the climate problem i'm sure everything else may go under drastic changes before the World Cup.

[karter]

The worst thing about it is the climate which I don't think you've pointed out. During the summer it becomes one of the hottest regions on earth, people don't go outside during the day and many infact migrate over the summer it's so warm. To try play football in a Qatar summer is unthinkable, at the very least it needs to be moved to winter but even so it'll be ridiculously warm.

Personally I disagree with FIFA's approach of going to the middle east, I don't think there's much money to be made etc and I'm yet to see what holding it in South Africa has done for the fortunes of Africa.

That's 3/4 World Cups in non-footballing nations (South Africa, Russia and Qatar), thankfully 2014 is in Brazil. I also think it's probably all corrupt and dodgy, FIFA has shown to be like that many times and it was totally unnecessary to announce two World Cups at once.

I did point the climate thing out

[Grig]

The worst thing about it is the climate which I don't think you've pointed out. During the summer it becomes one of the hottest regions on earth, people don't go outside during the day and many infact migrate over the summer it's so warm. To try play football in a Qatar summer is unthinkable, at the very least it needs to be moved to winter but even so it'll be ridiculously warm.

Personally I disagree with FIFA's approach of going to the middle east, I don't think there's much money to be made etc and I'm yet to see what holding it in South Africa has done for the fortunes of Africa.

That's 3/4 World Cups in non-footballing nations (South Africa, Russia and Qatar), thankfully 2014 is in Brazil. I also think it's probably all corrupt and dodgy, FIFA has shown to be like that many times and it was totally unnecessary to announce two World Cups at once.

I think everyone here has missed the point. The stadiums there will be state of the art and will have cooling systems/ air conditioning placed in them to sway away the climate problem. Essentially they are an extremely wealthy nation with the fact that the royal family will flood in plenty of money to make it happen. I think they are much better prepared for such an event than say South Africa was.

@Jordy: You argued over the fact that they are giving it to non-footballing nations. But what really is your definition to a 'footballing nation', one where there is a massive fan base or one where there is a world cup winning team? I must say, being Russian myself that Russia is extremely passionate about football. The top sport in Russia is football and if we win things, the nation celebrates.

Although I agree with the fact that the world cup in South Africa has not had a vast impact on the country. Sure, it's been modernized slightly and the infrastructure has improved, but in the long-run I don't think it's made any major impact on the economy.