QATAR THE SMALLEST WORLD CUP HOSTS IN HISTORY

QATAR will make history this month by becoming the smallest country to ever host the FIFA World Cup. More than a few eyebrows were raised back in 2010 when the tiny Gulf state won the right to host the 2022 tournament.

Concerns were raised about the country's human rights record, its persecution of the LGBTQ+ community, its treatment of migrant workers and its soaring summer temperatures - to name just a few.

On top of those concerns, hosting the country in such a small country is unprecedented in modern times.

In the early years of the World Cup, fans didn't travel in the same numbers as they do now.

Millions of supporters are expected to descend on Qatar and entire fan villages have had to be built in the desert to accommodate them.

At just 11,581 km2, Qatar is by far the smallest country to have ever hosted the world's biggest tournament.

That figure is for the whole of the country. The tournament is actually only taking place in the area around the capital city Doha. That's an area around just 500 km2 in size.

The previous smallest country was Switzerland.

The 1954 host is 41,285 km2, making it almost four times larger than Qatar. Despite this, it wasn't considered large enough to host the 2008 Euros on its own and shared hosting duties with Austria.

The next smallest hosts were England in 1966 at 130,279 km2, followed by Uruguay in 1930 (181,034 km2), and West Germany in 1974 (248,717 km2).

The largest hosts, to date, are Russia.

The 2018 hosts and now pariah state is 17,098,246 km2, making it almost twice as large as 1994 hosts USA at 9,833,520 km2.

However, the 2026 tournament is going to be hosted jointly by the USA, Canada and Mexico, three countries with a combined size of 499,974,618 km2.

When it comes to population though, Qatar isn't the smallest host.

Qatar has an estimated population of 2,937,800 people.

When Uruguay hosted the tournament in 1930, it only had a population of 1,875,000 people.

Switzerland had a population of 4,929,000 when it hosted in 1954.

Sweden's population was an estimated 7,409,000 people when it hosted in 1958, and Chile's was 8,044,000 people when it hosted in 1962.

The largest population was the USA's 263,126,000 in 1994.

That's closely followed by Brazil's population of 202,768,562 in 2014, then Japan & South Korea's joint population of 175,299,736 in 2002.