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FIFA has problems aplenty on the Russian front too

Football: A winter World Cup in Qatar isn't the only issue for the apex body
Last Updated 03 March 2015, 14:54 IST
Last Tuesday, FIFA effectively shifted the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from a summer event to a winter one. It turns out, as any intelligent observer knew all along, that it is too hot to stage a 64-game event in the Gulf state in June and July.

So, despite much gnashing of teeth by clubs in the 50 or so countries whose seasons will be cut in two, a decision was made to reschedule the tournament to November and December in 2022.

The decision in Doha, Qatar, will require a rubber stamp from FIFA's executive committee in Zurich on March 20. But most people have expected this change, and all that remains is for clubs in Europe and elsewhere to try to extract compensation for their disrupted business.

Sheik Salman bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain, the joint leader of the FIFA task force that was asked to consider all options for the 2022 tournament, had said a month ago that a November-December World Cup was virtually a done deal.

He narrowed down the options despite Qatar's maintaining that it could deliver on a summer tournament by developing cooling technology for stadiums that would astound the world and be useful outside of sports.

This seems unlikely to be tested. Sheik Salman's task force had concluded that the 2022 tournament must either be held in November and December or in January and February. The latter isn't wanted by FIFA's president, Sepp Blatter, who assured the International Olympic Committee that soccer would not overlap with the Winter Olympics. FIFA is mindful that advertisers and TV networks will have their eyes, and dollars, fixed on the Super Bowl at that time of year, too.

Voting for a summer World Cup in Qatar was not the only questionable decision that FIFA's executive committee took in December 2010. The majority also backed Russia to host the tournament in 2018.

This dual decision was presented as FIFA breaking new ground, taking the event to where it had never gone before. They likened it to when they put South Africa on the soccer map when it was picked to host the 2010 World Cup.

We might never fully know how the voting went down four years ago and how hosting rights were won and lost. Media reports, particularly in England, forced FIFA to expel -- temporarily -- two members before the vote.

But allegation after continuing allegation prompted FIFA's ethics committee to commission an independent investigation led by the former federal prosecutor Michael J Garcia. His 350-page report remains secret, locked in a labyrinth of FIFA procedures to decide which, if any, of the findings will be released to the public.

One thing we do know is that Russia did not open its full accounts to Garcia. It claimed that computers holding its dealings were destroyed by the company that leased them. And that, apparently, is standard practice in Russia. It may be. But what has taken place with Russia since then is a more urgent concern than Qatar.

The ruble has crashed while building costs have spiraled. Combine that with what happened in Crimea and the current fighting in Ukraine, and there are bound to be consequences for a 32-nation World Cup on Russian soil -- one that will be held three years from now, not seven (or eight).

Secretary of State John Kerry met with European ministers last weekend to discuss harsher economic sanctions against Russia because of the conflict in Ukraine. While that meeting took place in London, Vitaly Mutko, Russia's minister of sports, tourism and youth, gave one of his periodic reassurances that everything is on target for 2018.

It is closer than we may think. “The eyes of the footballing world will be on St Petersburg on Saturday 25 July,” read a FIFA reminder last week that the World Cup preliminary draw is just months away.

In the splendour of Konstantinovsky Palace in St Petersburg, FIFA met the local organizing committee there last week to go over the planning thus far.

Those around the table were too far away to hear the distant sound of protesters calling for a boycott of the World Cup and its qualification process.

Those of us who remember the American-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and then the Soviet-led retaliation over the Los Angeles Games four years later regard this with hollow despair.

State-ordered boycotts mean little or nothing to governments, and mostly just harm the athletes involved. We cannot, and should not, regard sports as sacrosanct or separate to the real world, but the prestige of sports should not be a cheap weapon for politicians.

Over the last year, trade sanctions have been imposed, selectively, on Russia. Nevertheless, the Gazprom logo is still worn by Schalke 04 in Germany, and Gazprom remains a prominent sponsor of both FIFA and the UEFA Champions League.

Last year, after a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over Ukraine, there were calls for Formula One to pull out of its first Grand Prix race in Russia, in the Winter Olympic city of Sochi. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's equivalent to Sepp Blatter, rebutted those calls by broadcasting that he had a deal with Vladimir Putin and the Sochi circuit and intended to honour it.

“We have a contract,” Ecclestone said at the time. “We'll respect it 100 per cent, and so will Mr Putin, I'm sure. He's been very supportive.”

Ecclestone actually said this was sport, not politics. He held his race and stood side-by-side with Putin last October.

Sochi, of course, hosted the 2014 Winter Games, despite concerns at the time about corruption, spiraling costs, terrorism and Russian legislation that was criticized as anti-gay. “Keep politics from our sport” was and still is the message.

Putin has already stated that the Kremlin will waive visa restrictions for the World Cup. Blatter will soon run, and most likely easily win, another four-year term as FIFA president, taking him through the 2018 event.

He will accept that mantle with his customary lecture about soccer overcoming all the beastly differences that mankind makes for itself.


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(Published 28 February 2015, 17:36 IST)

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