Friday 15 July 2011

Quatar Bought World Cup

The decision was a strange one. When it was announced that Quatar would hold the 2022 world cup ahead of popular bids from Spain and other more desireable locations, questions were raised. There have already been numerous wacky ideas upsetting people of football such as: winter world cup, fake "clouds" and games being played in 3 thirds to name just a few. However the argument is also that Quatar brought the world cup with their vast riches, so we have looked into the countries spending in more detail.

The countries leaders have refused to discuss how much money exactly was spent on the world cup bid, rightfully drawing a lot of attention, especially with all the bribe claims going around and so people are eager to find out the truth behind their successful bid.

Numerous questions have been asked about what the budget was, however no one will budge their position and enlighten us, hardly filling people with confidence in Quatar or Fifa.

Quatar argue that opening their accounts to the public would just cause more trouble than it is worth, what trouble we do not understand, surely signifying that there is something they do not want people to know about. They seem to feel that if their budget was shown then people would complain that they only won because of money, which is precisly the reason that people want to see the budget so that Quatar can try to prove that money is not the sole reason they won the 2022 bid.

Previously it was reported that the bid was worth around £30 million, however we are now told that it is actually "alot more" than the stated budget but how much "alot" is, is yet to be found out. Our guess is that the total cost of the bid would be £65 considering they spent £17 million on a prototype of a stadium alone and they are also having to pay for air cooling systems due to the epic heat in the country which is also a comlained about factor.

They also paid for high profile ambassadors such as Zinidene Zidane meaning they surely spent a lot more than other countries bidding for the same prize. One of those other bidders was the United States who feel that Quatar used their money to make the bid completly unbalanced and they state that they were clearly "not on a level playing field."

However, Quatar's argument is that spending big was a neccisary thing to do as they were the underdogs and that they needed the chance to show the rest of the world what they could do, like when Chelsea "bought" the Premier league title.

"We will not lie, our budget was significantly higher than any of the other bids," he told me. "But if you take into consideration what we had to spend it on. We started behind everyone else, we had to win hearts and minds." So they admit that their budget was significantly higher than any other bid so why can they not show how much and what the money was spent on, surely they cannot have anything to hide.


Lusail Stadium in Qatar, which will host the 2022 Fifa World Cup final
Qatar's Lusail Stadium will host the 2022 World Cup final

"There were a lot of people who did not take our bid seriously, whether it was inside Fifa or outside Fifa,"

In the current Fifa plans the World cup final will be played on July 3rd, however on this date of this year the tempreture was supposedly "cool" for Quatar but it was still in the mid 40's and was unbearable for more than 10 mins and that was without playing football or being stuffed in a stadium with thousands of other boiling people.

However the heat is not the only reason why people believe that the decision made is not right. With all the corruption allegations and wrongdoings going on inside the secrative Fifa, how can people trust such a odd, brave decsision made by the organisation, especially when the winning country also so happens to be extraordinarliy rich.

Bin Hammam has already quit his job within Fifa after he was accused of trying to buy bids for himself to be made the Fifa president, however he was also the leader of Quatar's bid and if he is found guilty then yet more questions will be raised over Quatars bid as he could have used the same bribery methods.

Quatar deny that Hammam had anything to do with winning votes, saying that he only had a minor role within the bid.

Fifa have closed the case on the 2022 decision as they want it to be over, however questions are still being asked and it will be a difficult burden to get rid of until Fifa can prove that no corruption has been going on.

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