Qatar proceeds with FIFA 2022 World Cup plans

Buffetted by critical reports over the human rights and safety of stadium construction workers and facing a possible scheduling change to a (northern hemisphere) winter event, Qatari organisers of the FIFA 2022 World Cup are pressing ahead with their plans to host football's biggest event.

While almost a decade away, Qatar's hosting of the World Cup has seldom been out of the media spotlight since the Arabian Gulf nation won the right to host the event back in December 2010.

In preparing to bring the event to the Middle East, organisers have revealed the concept for the first of six World Cup stadia that are now in the latter stages of the design process. Early work on the Al Wakrah Stadium will start in January with the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, is confident planning is on track and unaffected by the wider issues.

No issue has proved more persistent than the topic of when the event will be held. Qatar's winning bid was built around a traditional summer tournament played in air-conditioned stadiums. Al Wakrah is designed to meet this brief, yet world football governing body FIFA has, in recent months, appeared to be leaning towards moving the World Cup to a cooler part of the year, perhaps November and December. Earlier suggestions that the event would be held in January appear to have been shelved as that month would clash with the 2022 Winter Olympics.

However, switching the event to November and December and has proved the source of much controversy.

In a recent interview, Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee member Nasser Al Khater explained "if you look at maintaining the tournament in the summer, that means you are excluding a lot of countries from hosting a major event like the World Cup. That is why we came up with our cooling technology, which we are going to go ahead with regardless. It allows other countries to explore cooling technology also."

The event organisers have also had to deal with suggestions by FIFA President Sepp Blatter, for the tournament to be expanded geographically with games to be held in Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

While hoping that neighbouring countries will benefit from the event, Qatar is understandably not keen to share the event with Al Khater pleased that UAE Football Association Yousuf Al Serkal has called the notion "a crazy idea".

Al Khater adds "we have always maintained that this is not a Qatar World Cup, but rather a Middle East World Cup.

"It will provide a celebration of the Middle Eastern culture and will feature the involvement of countries around the region. We would like to think the fans will see Qatar as a place where they can come and watch football and then take a few days off and visit Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman (and) Bahrain.

"If you look at some of the countries that have or will host World Cups South Africa, Brazil, Russia these are vast countries that can require three-four hours' travel time (between host cities).

"If you put that into context, you could even go as far as to visit Beirut from this part of the world. So it will be quite easy for fans to visit the neighbouring countries and get a feel for the Middle East."

Image: Qatari football fans.

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