Sorry, am I missing something?  How can it not happen?  They won the bid!

Trap on a wind up again

Players' union FIFPro has backed the idea of staging the 2022 World Cup in Qatar in January in a bid to beat the humid Middle East weather.

The international players' union has backed calls to play the 2022 World Cup in Qatar in the the British winter instead of June and July - and claimed that players will be in better shape at that time of year.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter and general secretary Jerome Valcke have both thrown their weight behind moves to stage the tournament in January to avoid the heat problems.

Summer temperatures in Qatar can top 50 degrees C and players' union FIFPro said they are pleased at FIFA's willingness to consider changing the timing to winter.

Tijs Tummers, secretary of FIFPro's technical committee, said: "We will have to take a careful look at the international match calendar, but FIFPro does not foresee any insurmountable problems in this regard.

"Space will have to be made for the tournament, even though many countries already have a winter break.

"In Europe, competitive matches will have to be played in August and the second half of May and the first half of June. If you look at what happened last weekend with weather problems in Europe because of heavy snowfall, you could see this as an advantage rather than as a problem.

"And it might perhaps turn out that the players will be fitter at the start of a winter World Cup than was the case last summer at the World Cup in South Africa."

Tummers questioned the decision by FIFA to have awarded Qatar the tournament based on playing in the summer.

He added: "It is not sensible to award a World Cup in the summer to a country with an average temperature of 41C in June and July, a midday temperature of 50C and above all, extremely high humidity.

"Tourists are advised not to travel to Qatar in the summer months. Inhabitants of Qatar leave the country en masse during this period. The summer months in Qatar also do not provide suitable conditions for a festival of football such as the World Cup should be, including for the supporters.

"The organisers have guaranteed that the temperature inside the stadiums and at the training centres will be reduced to 27C by means of air-conditioning.

"That is all well and good, but it obviously does not fit in with ecological thinking, which we expect to be even more widespread by 2022."

Qatar bid chiefs have insisted that their air conditioning of stadiums and training grounds would be 'carbon neutral' as it would be based on solar energy

By http://topics.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=MATTHEW+FUTTERMAN&bylinesearch=true - MATTHEW FUTTERMAN

Qatar's winning bid to hold the 2022 World Cup was marked by a spending spree that included investments in the home countries of several executives who were responsible for choosing the host nation, according to internal documents from the emirate's bidding committee.

The spending sheds light on how FIFA regulations—outlined in the two-page rules of conduct for World Cup host-nation bidding—left the door open for hopefuls to open wallets to exert indirect influence on international soccer's small circle of decision-makers.

Qatar also paid soccer-world luminaries from France, Spain, Argentina and elsewhere who publicly endorsed its bid, according to Qatar bid committee documents and emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Some were paid more than a million dollars in connection with the endorsements, said a person familiar with the situation.

The documents don't show that Qatar violated the rules set down for World Cup host-nation bidding by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, which in December chose host nations for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Rather, they highlight how Qatar worked within FIFA's broad guidelines to win what was initially seen as a quixotic quest to host international soccer's marquee event.

FIFA bidding rules bar prospective hosts from promising favors or gifts to FIFA executives or their representatives. But the rules don't address whether would-be hosts can invest in the home countries of these executives, who, using secret balloting, determine the host of what is arguably the world's most lucrative sporting event.

FIFA's decision to award the World Cup to Qatar capped a scandal-plagued campaign that included allegations that the Qatar committee and Spain-Portugal's 2018 bid committee colluded to trade support from Africa for support from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries for the committees' respective bid years. The committees said the allegations weren't true. FIFA's ethics body didn't punish the bid committees, saying it didn't find sufficient grounds to warrant punishment.

An official speaking on behalf of the Qatar bid committee and its chairman, Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad al-Thani of the Qatar royal family, said Qatar did nothing wrong throughout the bid process.

A FIFA representative said its regulations ensured a fair and ethical competition. "FIFA has established clear rules of conduct for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process, which are also public and available on FIFA.com," the body said in a statement. "The bidding process has been supervised by FIFA's Ethics Committee since the beginning and this Committee acted whenever necessary."

Qatar bid-committee documents outlined how the emirate expanded the activities of a Qatar-based soccer-training academy—Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence, also controlled by the Qatar royal family—into a total of 15 countries world-wide.

One bid-committee document from 2009 states plans to expand grass-roots soccer training in Nigeria and to "build a football academy in Thailand emulating the Aspire Football Dreams Academy in Senegal."

Both Thailand and Nigeria had representatives on FIFA's executive committee who, at the time the document was produced, could provide Qatar with two of the 13 votes it would need on Dec. 2, 2010, to secure hosting rights.

Thailand is home to executive committee member Worawi Makudi. According to people familiar with the FIFA's secret balloting, Mr. Makudi voted for Qatar in the final round.

The http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15202695" rel="nofollow - 2022 World Cup in Qatar could be moved to winter if medical reports show summer temperatures in Qatar would be dangerously high, a senior Fifa official has admitted.

Football's world governing body has always maintained that Qatar would have to make the request to move the tournament.

But speaking at the meeting of the International Football Association Board - the body that governs the laws of football - in Edinburgh, general secretary Jerome Valcke became the first senior Fifa official to say the event could be moved if they receive strong medical advice that it needs to do so.

He said: "Maybe the Fifa Exco [executive committee] will say based on medical reports or whatever: 'We really have to look at playing the World Cup not in summer but in winter.'"

The idea to move the competition away from its traditional start date in June http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/16004787" rel="nofollow - - when temperatures in the Middle East can reach 50C - has previously been backed by http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/16004787" rel="nofollow - Uefa leader Michel Platini and http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9310671.stm" rel="nofollow - world footballers' union FIFPro.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter's position has given varying views on the issue. In January 2011 he said he http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9297416.stm" rel="nofollow - expected the competition to begin in the winter, but he then http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9387891.stm" rel="nofollow - backtracked on that comment a month later.

To allay possible health fears, officials from the emirate have also said that they intend to use air-conditioned stadiums and are researching http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9435035.stm" rel="nofollow - the potential to create artificial clouds.

It has previously been argued that any decision on moving to a winter date would have to be made by 2014 in order to give national leagues and competitions sufficient time to reorganise their calendars.

However, Valcke believes that the timeframe for any decision could be extended to 2015.

"I am not saying that the case is closed but what I'm saying is as long as we have not fixed the international calendar all alternatives are open," he continued.

"I can tell you there is no working group within Fifa thinking and working on what it means to move the World Cup from summer to winter for the time being.

"The international calendar has been agreed for 2015 to 2018, meaning that we kept open all potential for the period 2019 to 2022. We have time.

"I think it would be good to have a final decision about when this World Cup will be played and have an agreement between all the football family, but it's in 2022, nine years, and we have two World Cups to organise in Brazil and Russia, so there is some time."

English FA have come out and said it should be moved to the Winter. Knew the spinless c*nts wouldn't come out and say Qatar is unsuitable full stop  

I agree it is something FIFA should have thought about before awarding the World Cup to Qatar but it is 9 years away.