So Qatar is too hot in summer after all.
And at 40-50C in the shade, who can disagree? Even if the stadia are cool enough, the outside won’t be, and the prospect of a million beer-hungry fans stumbling out into such a furnace in desperate search of a cool lager does not bear thinking about.
“I support definitely, definitely,” Sepp Blatter said, “to play in winter here, to play when the climate is appropriate.”
The FIFA President’s support for a January Togel Online World Cup in 2022 appears clear enough. The temperatures in the summer months in Qatar are far more oppressive than their anti-alcohol or anti-gay laws, that is for sure. Playing in the Middle East’s winter makes sense therefore, when the thermometer rarely rises above 25c by day and has an average low of a pleasant 13C.
And Qatar has already successfully hosted big-name games of football outdoors at that time of year. But avoiding the sweltering summer and the need for expensive and unproven technology has a serious downside to it – a sandstorm brewing in club boardrooms across Europe all of FIFA’s making and the spectre of an almighty club v country conflict on the horizon. Blackpool manager Ian Holloway, famous for his juicy quips to the press, was typical of the domestic reaction when he launched a fiery tirade at the possibility of the football season closing down for two months to make up for FIFA’s initial error.
Holloway likened switching the World Cup to the European winter as akin to changing the date of Christmas.
“So we’ll just change everything cos your weather’s really hot,” he said. “Brilliant! I mean come on, what’s going on? What happened to the air-conditioned arenas. Bit too expensive 25 of them …
