Full marks to The Sunday Times’ Insight
team for another masterly expose of
the malfeasance of FIFA and Qatar, who
were so outrageously allotted the World
Cup finals of 2022.
But, alas, we have to wonder what
ultimate good it will do. In other words,
is there any palpable chance of those
World Cup finals being taken away from
a tiny country so manifestly unsuitable to
enjoy them?
Already Qatar has been indulged to
the extent of changing the timing of the
tournament from its summer, when it
would be as hot as a furnace, to the cooler
winter weeks, when it will necessitate
halting the European club season in its
tracks, with all the inevitable chaos.
Given the knowledge that it would be
impossible to stage the tournament in
the roasting days of a Qatari summer, it
is amazing that the competition was ever
awarded to Qatar at all. But, ominously,
there seemed hardly a squeak of protest
from UEFA and the European clubs,
while a couple of the most distinguished
former World Cup stars were seduced
into supporting Qatar’s claim. It seems
wretchedly like a betrayal and one can but
hazard a guess as to just what induced
such splendours of the game to betray it.
The latest Sunday Times investigation
gives abundant, repugnant chapter and
verse of what has happened. Needless
to say, vast sums of money were involved.
And predictably enough, television rights
were intimately involved.
The previous Sunday Times revelationswere so damning that you might have
thought stern action should long since
have been taken. So will the latest
shocking and well-researched revelations
have any more of an effect? This though
some of the most deplorable FIFA figures
have been forced out of the picture.
Qatar may be tiny, it may have no
football background or standing at all,
but it has got minerals and therefore
money in super abundance.
I would be a great deal more optimistic
about action being taken if it had not
been for the passivity with which the
major European nations accepted the
decision to load the tournament into the
thick of their own season. You might say
that they could scarcely concur with any
attempt to play the tournament in the
roasting summer, but by the same token
it is surely astonishing that they should
meekly in the first instance agree to stage
the tournament in Qatar at all.
Then you think of all those years they
allowed the appalling Joao Havelange to
reign as the president of FIFA and it is all
too tempting to abandon hope.More revelations about Qatar corruption but what good will they do?
THE VOICE OF FOOTBALL
Brian
GLANVILLE
Outrage...Sepp
Blatter (above)
announces Qatar
(below) will host
the 2022 World Cup