Qatar signals big shift in power for the global game
NEXT year’s Qatar World Cup could turn the global game on its head – and change the football calendar for good.
That’s the view of Simon Chadwick, director of the Eurasian Sports Centre at Emlyon Business School in France.
He knows the world of Middle East football inside out, having spent a lot of time in Qatar.
The 2022 World
Cup will be the first staged in the region.
And despite the negative headlines that have dogged the tournament since it was awarded to Qatar in 2010, Chadwick believes that if football is be a truly global game it is only right for the World
Cup to move into new territories.
He also thinks the competition reflects a shift in football power.
Chadwick said: “There are a lot of elements at play here but generally Qataris are football fans.
“If you go back 15 years, most of us didn’t know where Qatar was.
“The Arab world was the last part of the world that had never staged a World Cup.
“The World Cup will eventually go to China, and if it goes there you’ll also be looking at a potential change to when the tournament is scheduled.
“I can foresee a World Cup in
China being hosted in September or October.
“We’ll have this issue (of moving from June/july) again.
“It’s a reflection of a changing world. In football terms, Europe and South America aren’t in charge any more.
“You’ve got Chinese money flooding in, you’ve got interest from India, from Russia.
“That’s going to challenge all these issues around the time of year that tournaments are staged, the time of day that games are played and so on.”
Handing the
World Cup to Qatar in the first place pretty much turned traditional football thinking on its head.
And after this first World Cup to take place in the winter for northern hemisphere nations, we could be about to witness a fundamental transformation of the global calendar.
Chadwick added: “What seems to have happened is that some kind of financial settlement seems to have been agreed between FIFA and governing bodies.
That is significant.
“It shows that settlements can be reached with the right money and with the intention being good.
“You have to keep in your mind that six or seven FIFA partners are Chinese and more will come.
“You’ve got Qatar Airways as a FIFA sponsor too. So in reaching the settlement that they did, that money is coming from Qatar, China and other places.
“What we’re in the midst of here is a real shift – football is changing.”