Heat is on FIFA
How will governing body fix the Qatar World Cup mess?
How anyone could believe a soccer tournament is possible in a country where the temperature hovers in the region of 45 degrees is dangerously mind-boggling.
But that is what soccer’s governing body FIFA decided to sanction when it awarded the 2022 edition of the world’s largest sporting event to the tiny state of Qatar.
I am not sure most of us really understood the ramifications when FIFA made the stunning decision. We were told stadiums would be airconditioned. So would training facilities, fan zones and walkways between stadiums and metro stations. We accepted that the solar technology would be in place in time, even though the Qataris have no guarantees it will work.
Almost none of us has set foot in this country of some 1.6 million people. We can hardly imagine how impossible it is to walk around in such heat, let alone run about for 90 minutes, air conditioning or not.
So today, still nine years from the event, the heat is already scalding as FIFA must decide what to do about its blunder.
Let’s listen first to Chile’s Harold Mayne-Nicholls, who led the FIFA inspection team before the vote on who would host the 2022 World Cup. Here’s what he had to say in an interview with Inside World Football.
“We knew Qatar would be very, very risky and we put that in our report,” he said. “The Qataris told us they would have a system to cool the pitches, cool the stands and cool the training grounds. But the question then was, what if, in just one practice, the cooling system failed? Our concern was also with the fans. When it’s midsummer in Qatar, sometimes you cannot even walk.”
Obviously nobody with the authority to vote took any notice of the warning.
That sentiment has been echoed by FIFA’s vicepresident Jim Boyce and English FA chairman Greg Dyke. Boyce told the BBC: “I ask the question from a health and medical point of view. How can you take thousands of people to the greatest sporting event in the world and ask them to enjoy themselves in conditions I think are impossible?”
‘We knew Qatar would be very, very risky and we put that in our report.’
HAROLD MAYNE-NICHOLLS Head of FIFA’s site inspection team
The day before, Dyke told the media: “I don’t know how many people have been to Qatar in June. I have. The one thing I can tell you is you can’t play a football tournament in Qatar in June.”
If that is the case, what are the alternatives?
FIFA will not formally discuss options until October, but the general consensus suggests the governing body wants to move the event to winter — most likely early January to early February; at that time of year the temperature is acceptable.
However, it most certainly does not appear to be acceptable to those who run the leading professional leagues — especially the English Premier League, whose chief executive, Richard Scudamore, has gone as far as to say moving to a winter date would cause global soccer chaos.
That sounds like rhetoric gone overboard. Sure the global game traditionally works around World Cup summer dates, which is perfect for Scudamore’s boys (who are out of season when the World Cup finals are on).
But this is about money as much as anything. Scudamore talks about disruption of the massive television contracts that fuel the game but doesn’t, as far as I can fathom, explain why.
If the decision is to move the event to January-February, why can’t the winter-playing leagues start two weeks earlier and end two weeks later, thus allowing for a break for the month or so that would be required in the winter?
Scudamore also suggests making the switch would disrupt his league for the season before and the season after. How come?
The other alternative being bandied about says Qatar should be abandoned and the event moved elsewhere — most likely the United States, which would be great for Canadian fans.
That, naturally, does not sit well with the Qatar folk, who say they will meet the criteria they agreed to when they were awarded the event and can run it in either summer or winter.
What I see here are lawsuits, either from the individual leagues who hate the idea of a move, or by the Qataris, who will not give up easily. There is even the possibility that other bidding nations that lost to the Qatar will demand a rerun because the criteria have been altered from summer to winter.
Maybe there is one other compromise. What would be wrong with altering kickoff times to the evening? Maybe 9 p.m. and midnight? Matches would continue to be played in air-conditioned stadiums for the safety of both players and fans and a temperature closer to 30 C would not be dangerously unpalatable to the fans making their way to games.