A summer World Cup: decisions, decisions 27, February 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Qatar.Tags: Qatar, Qatar 2022, Qatar summer world cup, Qatar World Cup, Summer world cup, Summer world cup too hot, Winter world cup
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The question of whether Qatar’s 2022 World Cup will be held in the summer of some other time of year continues.
It was, of course, initially planned as a summer event. But soon after Qatar rather astonishingly won the right to host the tournament, there were several quotes emanating from the great and the good at FIFA (Blatter and Platini) stating that the tournament would probably be moved out of Qatar’s baking and, according to their own technical report, “potentially dangerous” summer heat.
These notions were soon quashed by people from Qatar’s organising committee.
Yet now the Emir, Hamad Al Thani, has once again raised the notion that this might change as he will “ask the people [Qataris]” what they want. The saga continues.
The Gulf blog 
Surely, what 300,000 Qatri’s want is irrelevant. They can not have their say over and above FIFA, Qatar FA, Uefa, national leagues, business, media etc.
It flies in the face of what Bin Hammam said about Blatter deciding unilaterally that it would be held in the winter, here is his quote:
“I know that football in Europe has quite a history, it is quite a business involving a lot of financial, media, marketing – a lot of things,” he said.
“It is unfair to these people that we talk about changing the calendar or the time without their full consultation and their full approval and their full agreement – I’m actually not happy to see that happening without the real stakeholders’ part of this discussion.”