São Paulo – The president of the International Football Association (Fifa), Joseph Blatter, stated on Thursday (21), in Geneva, that if Qatar aims to transfer the 2022 World Cup from the summer to the winter, a new vote may be opened to choose a host for the event. “They know that they run the risk of competing with other countries as the vote would have to be repeated,” said Blatter.
The World Cup is generally promoted between June and July; months in which the summer makes the temperature in the country exceed 50oC. Before Qatar was chosen for the tournament, however, heat had already been considered a challenge.
On Thursday, Michel Platini, the president of the UEFA and a French idol in the 1970s and 1980s, complained about the summer in Qatar and said that “At 50 degrees, you cannot possibly play football.” The president of the Premier League, which organizes the English championship, David Richards, and former German star Franz Beckenbauer also complained about the heat.
Blatter, stated that if the organizers of the cup in Qatar want to transfer the date of the tournament to the winter, they will have to compete for the event again, but he recalled: "For there to be a change to winter it is necessary that Qatar ask for it. They have not done so yet.” Blatter also said that any decision in this respect will only be adopted after the World Cup in Brazil, in July 2014. Before Qatar, Russia will receive the competition in 2018.
Richards, who participated in a conference about sports in Doha, on Thursday, stated that transferring the date of the Cup is not a simple task as, if that happens, it will change the calendar of many other championships and interfere in transmission and sponsorship contracts.
“At the moment it has a tremendous amount of implications for Europe. For us, at this minute, the answer (about transferring the date) is ‘no’,” said Richards, despite adding that "common sense" will prevail to solve the problem. The cup in Qatar has already been threatened with cancellation at other occasions, as the country is accused of buying votes to be chosen as host of the tournament. If a new date is called, countries that lost the dispute to Qatar may also participate: namely the United States, Japan, Australia and South Korea.
*Translated by Mark Ament
