There are many football Fans around the world who believe that FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter is slowing down, that he is not as sharp as he was when first elected to the Presidency. His gaff at the weekend would tend to reinforce those views, as once again he blotted his copy book.
Mr Blatter stated that Australia’s World Cup bid included proposed games in New Zealand, which implied that he had in fact failed to read the Bid Book. Mind you the book did contain 760 pages and included 20 chapters, but he did receive it back in May so could easily have read it on the plane to South Africa for this year’s World Cup.
The statement from Blatter made to French newspaper L’Equipe shows that he was only ever focussed on the bid from Qatar, which he publicly supported. To not know that Australia’s bid didn’t include New Zealand was either a barefaced lie to justify FIFA’s decision, or he quite simply never read the bid document. He advisors obviously did not read it either.
There are many who rightly question the decisions made at the top of the game’s World body FIFA. But this latest gaffe has increased the heat on FIFA and its President. Blatter has frequently bulldozed his own agendas and changed FIFA’s own regulations.
If as he said in the same interview, “I think it could be the same in Qatar and that some matches could take place in nearby countries” then it will mean that Qatar’s bid proposal is different from what is in fact going to be delivered and what the Executive Committee based their votes on. Many questioned why 2022 hosting rights were being voted upon now, and questions need to be asked if this is in fact the plan, to host games outside of Qatar, and if so then the voting should be declared void and a second vote take place. The Executive Committee are unlikely to push for such a decision, but the governing bodies around the world should, as it reflects poorly on the game as a whole.
No doubt whatsoever, and we had stated this on the show six months ago that Russia and Qatar would win, although the USA did make us doubt that call.
There is no doubt that Qatar is the best option in terms of stability in the region.
But with some executives unlikely to be there in 8 years one can’t help feeling the bid process was brought forward for reasons that had nothing to do with building stadia. But then again Qatar have no excuses now for not being ready.
There is no doubt in my mind that everything was staged so that Qatar could host the 2022 World Cup. There are too many suspicious circumstances.
Why make the bid 12 years before the cup? It is claimed countries needed more time to build infrastructure but in reality South Africa was the only country to struggle with their 4/5 year time frame, given 1 more year and they would have easily had the time. The only bid that requires 12 years of infrastructure building is Qatar.
However, as angry as the decision made me, I’ve since started to open my eyes and realise that FIFA have done nothing wrong by their rules and if the Middle East was to hold a World Cup Qatar would be one of the safer countries to host it. The populous countries of Iran and Iraq are surely out of the question leaving only Egypt (unlikely given Africa has recently hosted a world cup), Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar as countries and of those only Qatar had the political clout within FIFA to get the World Cup.
I suspect that this was a chance too good to give up for FIFA, they wanted World Cup football in the middle east and it was unlikely that any other government in the region would commit such large amounts of money to ready themselves for such an event. They had no choice but to go with this bid.