Welcome back everybody, I’m very excited to pick up where we left off, which are the reasons why Qatar does not, under any circumstances, deserve to host the next World Cup.

In 2010 Qatar was awarded the rights to host the tournament in the summer of 2022, knowing full well the temperature would be astronomically high to the extent that it may as well be played on Venus. The Qataris stated that they would have “Air conditioning for all grounds and floating solar clouds to shade the pitch” according to the daily mail. A floating solar cloud sounds like something from an 80’s movie set in the 2010’s (Bladerunner is the first one that comes to mind), so I don’t know why they thought that would work. To every sane person’s surprise these efforts have been futile. They confirmed this summer that they will officially host the World Cup in late November and December instead, which happens to be smack bang in the middle of the season for domestic club leagues and the Champions League in Europe, causing them to put a pin in the middle of their seasons. Across the Atlantic the NFL, NBA, and NHL seasons will in play in North America, meaning Americans and Canadians will be less likely to tune into watch should any of these sports overlap.

Even if Qatar did have acceptable conditions to play the cup in, they severely lack the infrastructure required to host a month-long event. They have no lineage of Association football, and therefore no stadiums in place, and a severe lack of satisfactory standard hotels. Nick Miller of Bleacher report reported that “It will cost £138 billion ($220 Billion in 2014) to build the stadium, hotels and assorted other parts of infrastructure required. By way of comparison, it cost $3.5billion to prepare South Africa for the 2010 tournament.” Which is huge waste of money.

On a much more serious note, Qatar, as I previously mentioned is not home to any acceptable stadiums. They have had to build several new ones from scratch, in unbearable conditions, causing hundreds of deaths to the people building them. According to Jamie Doward of The Observer, in a 2014 article “400 Nepalese migrant workers have died in construction in Qatar since the World Cup bid was won.” In the six years between now and when Doward’s article was released, a Guardian article by Pete Pattinson from March 2020 confirmed that “34 stadium workers have died in the past six years.” An improvement over 400 of course but for reference, when building the stadiums for the 2012 Olympics in London, a grand total of zero workers were killed. Work still needs to be done. Therefore, more lives will be put at risk. I hope whatever the bribe the Qatar voting FIFA board members were (I’m obliged to say “allegedly”) given is enough to ease their conscience and justify the lives lost in the process. Maybe they should pay them a visit in the middle of July next year to see how they’re getting on. It’ll be good practice because it’ll be hot where they’ll inevitably end up.

Qatar is also a nation which has outlawed homosexuality. I am the furthest thing from a phony civil rights activist. I absolutely loathe journalists, and “activists” that do nothing other than write and tweet about issues to paint an “I’m not racist” or an “I’m woke” image for themselves, without actually doing anything. That being said, I have no problem with actively speaking against the disgusting culture and attitudes that the nation of Qatar has. Surely there are same sex couples that are fans and want to travel to watch their home nation play, but they will more than likely refuse if they are going to be treated like second class citizens. There will be plenty of girls and women that want to do the same but will be forced to completely cover up like a Halloween ghost. Speaking from a civil rights perspective, Qatar is the worst place to host an international sporting event since the 1936 Summer Olympics, which were hosted in the heartland of Nazi Germany.

As I mentioned earlier, FIFA can-not award the World Cup to the U.S.A because they’re hosting the majority of it in 2026. There was speculation that instead they would rightfully pay reparations to England who were screwed out of hosting it in 2018 because the Russians were up to their old cheating tactics. There is still time FIFA. Listen to your former president and acknowledge that project Middle East is a disaster. Give it to the one country in the world that could host the event with a distinct lack of preparation time and it still be a success. England is the home of some of the most magnificent stadiums, hotels, and infrastructure on Earth, with five elite stadiums in London alone. Many of which have been drastically upgraded since hosting Euro ‘96. You owe it to the people of this nation, you owe it to the thousands of minimum wage workers in Qatar risking their lives, the families of these workers, and you owe it to the fans that will be discriminated against in Qatar. The same fans that help line your pockets with money. Do the right thing for once in your company’s history and let football come home where it belongs!