The 2022 World Cup Should Not Be Held in Winter or Qatar

The depressing spectre of the World Cup finals being held in Qatar in 2022 continues to loom over the football world. 

Even if you can force yourself to look beyond the increasing and troubling allegations of corruption in how FIFA originally awarded the tournament to Qatar, recently detailed in The Sunday Times (subscription required), it still remains a ludicrous idea to allow it to go ahead there.  

This week, UEFA president Michel Platini told the BBC he supports the World Cup in Qatar being played in the winter. 

“It will not be in April, it will not be in May or June or July or September. It will be November, December or January,” he said.

In December 2010, the Qataris won the right to host the tournament in the traditional summer months of June and July. 

If the Qataris wished to stage the World Cup during the winter, this should have formed a part of their bid. But of course, they omitted any mention of this, as it would have severely harmed their chances of winning.

Qatar won the bid on a false premise, and so it is patently absurd to allow them to continue to hold on to the World Cup.

If they cannot stage the tournament in June and July, then a new vote should be held to find a country that can.

It continues to beggar belief that a majority of the FIFA Executive Committee believed it was acceptable to host the World Cup in a tiny nation with a population of around two million, no history of football and where the summer temperatures can reach up to 53 degrees Celsius (127.4 Fahrenheit).

These FIFA Executive Committee members chose to ignore a technical report in 2010 that said hosting the World Cup in Qatar during their summer would present a high risk to the health of both players and fans.

Unsurprisingly, nothing has changed in the last four years, and this week, as reported in The Guardian, FIFA’s chief medical officer, Jiri Dvorak, repeated this warning by saying, “What I have said is that for the players, the accompanying staff and the fans the months June till August are highly critical in terms of risk, due to the climatic conditions in Qatar.”

A governing body that awards a tournament to a country where their players are not safe is clearly not fit for purpose.

Pool/Getty Images

The advantage of moving the tournament to winter would be that the players and fans would no longer be at risk, but it would cause major disruption to the world’s leading leagues, possibly impacting as many as three seasons.

There is a more persuasive argument that the Middle East and the Arab world deserve to stage the World Cup for the first time. And as Platini pointed out in the same interview with the BBC, Arab countries have previously lost seven bids for the tournament, and so, as he says, “It was time to give them the World Cup." 

But not in Qatar in 2022, and not under these forced circumstances.

If it is unsafe to host the World Cup in Qatar in June and July—and it obviously is with their searing temperatures—then a re-vote should occur.

Awarding Qatar the 2022 World Cup was the moment FIFA overstretched itself, and that mistake should not be allowed to triumph.