World Cup 2022 Coming to USA After All? Zwanziger works to strip Qatar of 2022 World Cup

Sorry.. need to brush up on my German, although I tend to agree. Did FIFA even think this thing through? How can you have a world cup in a Islamic country where alcohol is illegal and men and women have to sit in different parts of the stadium?

 

I really don't care too much if the US ends up getting the WC or not. All the other countries that bid for 2022 could have hosted a great tournament.

But Qatar must go. MUST. It ranks pretty highly on the list of stupid, thoughtless money grabs from FIFA (and they have made quite a lot of those).

 

If Australia won in the final round in front of the U.S., it wouldn't have bothered me. I still would go.

For me during leading up to the announcement, all I said was U.S. or Aussie.

 

None of that is true. You are watching too much FOX news I think.

The whole issue is about the size of the country. Qatar would be a fine host option for, say, the summer Olympic games, but it is far too small to host a World Cup (obviously).

 

Are you serious.. Well, let's take a look at what happened at this years Asian Cup Final in Qatar this year

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0yVbyYNFNs"]Qatar asian cup final, police not letting ticket holding fans in. - YouTube[/ame]

https://www.bigsoccer.com/soccer/bill-archer/2011/01/31/qatar-screws-up-royally/

http://www.theroar.com.au/2011/02/02/qatar-and-afc-greed-leaves-fans-stranded-for-asian-cup-final/

There were even reports that some Japanese women were beat by police because they were being split apart from their children!!

Screw that! I want to be able to go to a world cup game after smoking a fat joint and with two hookers under each arm. Anyone that tries to impede my freedom will know the true meaning of terror!

 

Helllalujah.


The other countries I would have liked were

Australia- 5am matches at a cricket ground?-oooo yeahhhh
UK- We need to go back to the homeland of the game soon.

 

Here are some possibilities if the current rotation process stays in put...

Since this:
2014 - Brazil (CONMEBOL eligible again starting in 2026)
2018 - Russia (UEFA eligible again starting in 2030)
2022 - Qatar (AFC eligible again starting in 2034)

Could happen:
2026 - `CONCACAF - quite possibly USA`
2030 - `UEFA - quite possibly England` : `Would be nice if Uruguay could host since 1930 WC`

edit: Just to be clear, soccer/football didn't originate in England.

 

???

 

One wonders, if new bidding occurs and a new host for '22 wins: Would this mean that the TV and other media rights would have to be rebid on and the already sold rights for the '22 event would have to be taken back?

I imagine all this could result in a number of lawsuits.

 

Qatar might be rich but it has a population of 1.7 million, i don't think they have the infrastructure to accomadate the millions of fans and media that will pack the tiny country. the country plans to build 9 brand new stadiums with over 40,000 in capacity, plus expand and renovate 3 others. they will need to build up a suitable infrastructure, they will have to break the Qatarian law to sell alchohol and the estimated cost of preparation for the cup is over 65 billion US dollars, or 41,000 Dollars per person in Qatar. How in the world does FIFA expect Qatar to pull this off? the US would be best suited to host a world cup on short notice.

 

You would have to go back to the 7th or 8th century in China.

 

The ancient Chinese invented kicking a ball around. That's not the same thing as inventing soccer.

 

Or to clarify madmatt, association football.
I.e. the people's game bro. What would become the World Cup, what we are discussing.
The English n Scots got THAT started.

 

"Forget it, he's rollin'."

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI"]Animal House: Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor - YouTube[/ame]

 

You dumbasses act as if autocratic countries can't change the rules when it's convenient to them. Especially the men/women thing. The overwhelming majority of spectators will be foreign tourists, upon whom there are no co-mingling restrictions. For locals attending matches, I'm certain they will either relax the restrictions for that one month, or will come up with a rather easy segregated solution.

You further act as if $65 billion US is going to be hard for them to come by, what with their large oil reserves and enormous (3rd largest in the world) gas reserves. If they even get in on a fraction of the shipping/cargo traffic that Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been able to attract, they're golden. Money won't be a problem. Schedule might be, but these places have a way of throwing endless supplies of cheap labor and expensively talented foreign engineers at schedule problems.

Regarding alcohol:

If you think that won't be further extended in 11 years' time, especially for the one month period of the tournament, you really don't get the southern Gulf and its autocracies (outside of Saudi). The UAE (in particular, Abu Dhabi) abides by a similar, somewhat less-strict form of Sharia, including similar prohibitions on alcohol. The amount of looking-the-other-way-in-service-of-collecting-foreign-tourist-money is positively staggering. Yes, you will be severely dealt with if you have alcoholic beverages in public, but that's pretty much true in most states in the US. Yes, you CAN get into a cab falling-down drunk and get home quickly and safely provided you don't puke all over the place or start assaulting anyone. So long as you can stand up sufficiently and not make a spectacle of yourself, you can walk around the city pretty damn drunk with few exceptions. You think this will be different in 11 years in a country that is only about a decade behind the UAE in really fast development and tourist accommodation?

Hell, the time that the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship fell during Al-Hijra (Islamic New Year), the government outlawed ALL alcohol (even at hotels) and "loud music" (i.e. nightclubs) for the entire weekend - until they realized it was really bad for business. Literally mid-evening on Thursday night, they lifted the music ban, then later the alcohol ban. Thursday afternoon, before the official lift of the ban, I enjoyed multiple Carlsburgs on the golf course. They changed their minds literally overnight, across the country.

As much as I think the Qatar World Cup is ludicrous and a bad idea for several reasons, the wanton ignorance that keeps popping up is something I can't abide. The legal and cultural issues are the easiest to overcome, followed by the money.

 

Right. Not many people point one of the real stupidities of the Qatar World Cup: the boiling hot weather at that time of year (the tournament will certainly not be moved to January) and the delusional stadium designs.

The one thing I would like to point out in your post is where you say that Qatar is a decade behind the UAE. They are a decade behind if you were to take a simple linear development model. However, the fact is that UAE developed as quickly because it was the first in the region to do so. Now that they are there, Qatar will find it difficult to maintain the kind of development that the UAE had.

Of course, even if they do maintain UAE levels of growth all the way to 2022, they would still be behind the UAE. I kind of wonder what Abu Dhabi and Dubai will look like by that point.

 

That's a decent point, but I'm not convinced that "first" means "fastest" always. Fits and starts in the global economy have a ton to do with it. Basically, it's down to timing. Eventually, despite the concerted efforts of the major players (esp. the US), the global economy will start back on a strong upward pattern. Even with all the turmoil, Abu Dhabi has continued to grow pretty steadily, while Dubai had a major, major pause (and it still may be in it). Abu Dhabi may not have all the flash of Dubai (they're getting there, though), but they HAVE been growing mostly out of necessity. That island is super-crowded.

Anyway, the point of all that is that Qatar may find their own way and may have several years of strong global growth after a pretty major and long bottom. It may work out that they are perfectly poised to take advantage of the good timing. It may not.

You are certainly right that nothing is sure about any of this. But one thing you can count on is that oil and gas will be valuable and Qatar has a lot. They WILL have money to spend. You are probably also right that Doha will be behind the UAE in total development, but they don't have to get to Abu Dhabi + Dubai levels to host the tournament.

As far as what AD and Dubai will look like in 11 years? I'd put a fair amount of money on Dubai starting to look old and somewhat emptier than it does even now and Abu Dhabi looking like a hell of a metropolis like the Dubai of the early 2000s, except with AD's occupancy rate being higher than Dubai's ever was. The sheer amount of stuff Abu Dhabi is building out of whole cloth on the ancillary islands is amazing, but a lot of it is both flashy AND useful/cultural. They seem to have a more realistic approach to residential capacity than Dubai ever did.

 

Ron Paul supporter in here throwin' insults.



get under the table, hide everyone, hide!!

 

Do you have anything to add?

 

And then change them back after they steal my money? No thanks, I wouldn't have supported the military regime in Argentina in 78 either..

Meh.. a good dash of ignorance every now and then is not so bad. It keeps the discussions fresh.

 

That's your prerogative. Interesting, though, that you would characterize a voluntary exchange as "stealing".

Anyway, I thought the faux-outrage was that they were going to have difficulties throwing the party because of their laws. Why don't you like the goalposts where they were?

If you don't mind being exposed as an ignoramus - or, if you were being insincere in your apparent lack of clue, a bigot - that's cool.

 

The Qatar world cup will go down in flames. Thank you for your time.

 

Maybe. Maybe not. Everyone said the same thing about South Africa, and it came off pretty damn well (except for Mandela's granddaughter), the usual post-huge-event failures aside.

Qatar is better-positioned to get things done. Everyone was worried about SA right up to the last month.

It's still a stupid choice, but they will get stuff built.