FIFA World Cup 2022: “Thanks to the four votes of Platini and his team, the World Cup went to Qatar rather than the United States,” started Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president during an interview with BBC Sport.
Blatter, aged 86, was president of world football’s governing body when Qatar was awarded the tournament in 2010. He expressed his concern regarding the country’s size, saying that it is “too small of a country” to host the massive tournament, while “football and the World Cup are too big for it.”
His stance was revealed during an upcoming BBC Radio 5 Live podcast where he candidly spoke about the decision to award Qatar the World Cup.
Qatar has spent roughly $200 billion on infrastructure and other development projects since winning the bid to host the 5-week long World Cup.
Around $6.5 billion of that amount was spent on building eight stadiums for the tournament, including the Al Janoub stadium designed by the late acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid.
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The Qatar World Cup, the first to be hosted in the Middle East in the tournament’s 92-year-history and the first during the Northern Hemisphere winter, takes place from 20 November to 18 December.
According to BBC, FIFA’s executive committee voted 14-8 for Qatar to host the tournament ahead of the United States 12 years ago, at the same time Russia was awarded the 2018 event.
“It was a bad choice and I was responsible for that as president at the time,” Blatter said as he revealed his decision to vote for the US.
Blatter also said Fifa had adjusted the criteria used to select host countries in 2012 after concerns were raised about the treatment of migrant workers building World Cup stadiums in Qatar, BBC states.
FIFA World Cup 2022: A “carbon neutral” event?
The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is being advertised as a “carbon neutral” event with zero or negligible net impact on the climate.
However, according to an investigation by Carbon Market Watch, evidence states that the tournament’s true emissions levels and climate impact have been “underestimated”.
Organisers of the event estimated that the World Cup will emit 3.6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e). On the flip side, the report finds that this does not accurately represent the tournament’s actual footprint due to the choice of accounting approach.
Carbon Market Watch states: “To compensate for the remaining emissions associated with the World Cup, organisers have contributed to establishing a new carbon credit standard, the Global Carbon Council.
“While it is supposed to deliver at least 1.8 million credits to offset World Cup emissions, it currently, just months away from the tournament, only has two registered projects, and has issued just over 130,000 credits.”
Around 1.5 million tourists will visit Qatar for the World Cup, reports London-based research firm Capital Economics. If each visitor stayed for 10 days and spent $500 a day, spending per visitor would amount to $5,000, the research firm said. That could amount to a $7.5 billion boost to Qatar’s economy this year.