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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Blatter admits : Qatar 2022 World Cup award may be a mistake

FIFA may have made a "mistake" in awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, according to president Sepp Blatter.

Asked by insideworldfootball.com about awarding Qatar the tournament, the 77-year-old said: "It may well be that we made a mistake at the time."

The FIFA bid document clearly stated that FIFA World Cup is, in principle, "expected to be held in June and July of the year of such Competition" ... but summer temperatures in Qatar can reach 50C  and it will clearly be impossible to play in such conditions.

Despite that fact, Blatter oversaw a decision process that awarded the 2022 tournament to Qatar anyway, and now the head of FIFA wants to move the World Cup to a European Winter timeframe - but that has met with loud resistance from European football federations and leagues.

The next step will be a FIFA Executive Committee meeting on October 3/4 where it will be discussed further and the committee will decide whether to adopt Blatters "recommendation" to change the dates to Januaary 2022.

Will FIFA continue to submit to Blatter's increasingly eccentric diktats? Or will the October meeting see the end of Blatter's reign and will FIFA see common sense and revisit the decision to award Qatar the World Cup ?

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