So here it is: the Merry Christmas World Cup 2022 in Qatar

| 0 commentaires

Just when you thought that the stench surrounding Qatar 2022 could not get any worse, Fifa confirms its complete disregard for everyone else’s opinion. Again

• How the 2022-23 English football season could look

• Owen Gibson: the when, why and what of a winter World Cup

And so it has come to pass. Fifa has drawn a line in the desert sand – and they haven’t used the magic foam. Actually, perhaps it would be better to refer to the latest news about Qatar 2022 as an annunciation, because we now know Fifa is to be delivered of a Christmas World Cup, with a final apparently played on the night before Christmas Eve. So festive! Maybe the grounds could serve mulled wine, to warm the cockles of those braving the 22-degree Doha evenings, and adapt the pie option to mince (the other sort of mince)?

Anyone looking for the three wise men in this tale is probably going to have to scale down their search, or at least settle for three blokes with an IQ pushing 90. Humble stables are also in short supply – unless you count the stinking makeshift camps in which many workers building the Qatar dream are housed. And I’m not sure Fifa does count them. With entire cities being thrown up in the desert just to stop various new stadiums looking silly, Sepp Blatter is unlikely to have to lay his down sweet head in a manger. Then again, perhaps it’s more helpful to think of the Fifa boss as the Father Christmas in all this – a twinkly-eyed, genial old man, in whom all sane and rational adults should continue to believe.