BiscuitBlueCheese wrote:
Qatar. A country with a permanent population smaller than the city of Bristol and a geographical area smaller than the Falkland Islands. The rest of the population is made up of modern day slaves and you can be sure they'll be shipping in a lot more from Dubai to build those fancy new stadiums. I know the stadiums are very pretty but they're also a colossal waste of money because they'll all be empty/knocked down after the World Cup. The heat is also something like 45/50 C in July there so they're literally planning to air condition air, which makes the environmentalist inside me die a little bit.
I'm sure the fans will love the fact that they can't buy alcohol anywhere and they aren't allowed to kiss their partners (who will have to be modestly dressed with covered shoulders, of course) or, if they're gay, have the possibility of being thrown into prison for 5 years. Along with the fact that it'll be searingly hot, along with the fact that the native population is tiny, along with the fact that it is miles from anywhere, along with the fact that by FIFA's own admission the internal travel network and infrastructure is terrible will all combine to make people not bother going. The best World Cups are those held in countries where football has a huge national following i.e. Europe and South America. It makes no sense from any of FIFA's bullshit 'developing football' schemes either seeing as the Qatari league is literally made up of 37 year old league 1 journeymen.
I'm a bit miffed England didn't get it but if they'd have at least chosen countries with decent bids like Spain/Portugal and Australia or Netherlands/Belgium and even the bloody USA I'd have been able to complain less but they have literally chosen the two countries that their own investigation teams marked down as the highest risk candidates in a number of categories.
The whole process of bidding seems like an unnecessary charade of a popularity contest when everyone who wanted it might as well have just written down their wish to host the thing with their chosen stadiums on a piece of a4 paper, signed it with hugs and kisses and mailed it off to the fuckers and let them have done the work instead of dragging confused looking celebrities and politicians to suck Blatter's liver spotted old knob for a few days when it was all decided by the size of the back room bungs. No fucking wonder Putin didn't turn up, he knew they had it in the bag.
Also of note is that the Qatari bid literally had to have a caveat explaining that yes, they would in fact allow Israel to compete in the competition and they would recognise Israeli passports to allow their fans to go, not that they would want to.
Or even if they'd have given one of the tournaments to a country that wasn't dubious. If it had be Spain and Qatar or Russia and Australia you'd be a bit more accepting of it all.
They've got some big old hairy balls to be so blatantly bent. We should take our ball back.