Qatar to host 2022 World Cup

So. After some secret balloting, FIFA decided to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively. However, the verdicts came amid allegations of corruption and bribery, and somehow, the English and American took it a lot harsher.

Some interesting stuff in the article by Time:

"TIME sees geopolitical trends at work in the success of the Russian and Qatari bids."

- Hmmmm....

"U.S. soccer authorities have for some time been branding their country as the game's heir..."
I can understand why the UK wants so badly to host the World Cup. But the US?! hahah. Not that Qatar has an excellent soccer team but neither is the US known for soccer.

Petrodollars in Russia and Qatar are "a far cry from the debt-ridden treasury in Washington or the U.K. counting its pennies while putting aircraft carriers up for auction"

Russian bid's key patron is non other than Roman Abramovich - Russian businessman, Forbes 50th Richest man, and owner of Chelsea Football club.

"Who needs a totally free press or fair elections to guarantee a good show?"

- True. North Korea is putting on quite a good show now too haha. But yes i do have to agree with that.

But i'm not too sure on the last point about Terrorism being not so terrifying and apparantly, Osama bin Laden is a fan of the game hahahah. But well, the author is not wrong to say that disrupting an event destined to be a massive source of Arab pride might cause backlash. Come to think of it, it's more likely to face a terrorism attack if it was in the US or UK? Well, let's hope the terrorists think the same way too.

src: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034759,00.html#ixzz178MsA2zS


On another note, Zidane is quite a bit richer since Qatar won the bid...