Studs Up

Among all the voting furor, I’m actually pleased to see Qatar get a shot at the tournament just to see what kind of show and technology will be used and/or created just to make it work. I mean 12 stadiums in a 30km radius? Seriously? Outdoor air conditioning? 2022 is 12 years away, that’s the fucking future. Qatar is already on the fast track to modernisation, I mean just Google the word “Qatar” and you’ll get dozens of CGI renderings of what I assume the country will eventually look like. What’s it like right now? I obviously have no idea, but the point is that in 12 years it’s probably going to be more than a little different. The place is basically going to be an entire country virtually designed specifically to host a football tournament, and that could be pretty damn cool. I imagine there’ll be robots, and some sort of alcoholic mist that just drifts across the dunes, getting you wasted as you take the hover ferry from sky stadium to sky stadium. Not to mention this will all be happening in such a small area with all fans, teams, countries and festivities within easy travel of each other. The intensity of the tournament, as a live experience, should be unlike any other. Oh what a time it will be.

It’s also a bit sad to see the losers already rolling out some pretty lazy “It’s a Muslim nation” fear-mongering. Yes they have certain laws that will require special attention, but Qatar is one of the more liberal countries in the middle east and while they maintain their own values they’ve also tried to accomodate those who are visiting, or immigrated, from other countries and cultures. Again, FIFA’s sentiment that the World Cup can be used to break down barriers across said World is to be admired – their using it as an excuse for horrendous corruption is not.

On the flip side, I did wish that England or the US got at least one of the tournaments. You’ve got to throw in a big market for accessibility’s sake and I think FIFA are ignoring the fact that both England and America need a shot in the arm to help their grassroots development. England’s young talent is already at an all-time low with kids taking interests in fun of a virtual kind over jumpers-for-goalposts while the US will always need a good prod now and then to get over the hump. Football as we know it needs England and the Premier League to stay as passionate as it has been for generations to come, and football as we *could* know it would only benefit from the US finally taking the sport seriously and all the revenue, interest and media coverage that would bring.

Then again, FIFA are a bunch of dudes who are somehow operating outside the law and know it. So the only shock from this bidding process was that anyone was shocked at all to find that personal vendettas, manipulation and collusion seemed rife yet again. It’s sort of like going to a whorehouse, being told by the whore that she is rife with disease, and being shocked the next day when your dick falls off.

It’s EXACTLY like that.