Comment: Qatar 2022, what’s the big deal?

People have been complaining about Qatar's lack of football pedigree. Since when has that been<br /> prerequisite to host?

It’s really funny how people can get so riled up about stuff, and I mean really angry. In the matter of just a week, Qatar has been called an apartheid state, has been accused of spewing bile against the ‘free world’ through al-Jazeera and Fifa, football’s governing body, has been accused of having an anti-US bias.

Some even said football died the day the bid was awarded. To top it off, US President Barack Obama  even called it a mistake.

All this and much more just because Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 football World Cup.

“It’s politics, it’s friendships and relationships, it’s alliances, it’s tactics,” said US football chief Sunil Galati after failing to get the tournament back the American soil. So what, I say. Friendships, relationships, alliances and tactics, that is what football is about, right?

What surprises me is that most of the critics seem less upset that the US missed out and are more upset over the selection of Qatar. Do I sense some bias? Pot calling the kettle black, perhaps?

I am not defending Fifa. I agree that it has made some unexpected decisions in the bidding for the two tournaments. Two seemingly strong contenders, England for 2018 and the US for 2022, were dumped quite unceremoniously.

The decisions were certainly surprising for these two countries if not downright shocking. Qatar is the smallest country to win a bid, and the first Arab country to do so. It is hot and the football infrastructure is inadequate. But I still think it’s the right decision.

One idea behind awarding the World Cup to Qatar is to get the game going in parts of the world where Fifa thought it needed a jump-start. And the world cup is one hell of a jump-start.

Qatar will rebuild three stadiums and build nine new ones spread over seven cities, all of them climate-controlled. It will spend billions to revamp an air, rail and road system, ensuring that travel between venues will be no more than an hour.

Doubts remain over whether the country will be able to cope with an influx of approximately 400,000 fans. The country currently has around 50,000 hotel rooms, but bid leaders have promised that 95,000 will be available come 2022.

People have been complaining about the lack of football pedigree of the nation. Since when has that been a prerequisite for the rights to host? Otherwise the world cup would just keep going back to countries like Brazil, Italy, Argentina and Germany besides a few others.

The fact though, that many Western nay-sayers may have missed is that size does not really matter. Qatar has more than enough space for the number of stadiums needed to host such an event, and has more than enough money seeing as it is one of the richest countries in the world.

Most importantly, it has a football-mad population.

The writer is the Content and Style Editor at The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2010.