Blatter Admits Qatar World Cup May Be A Mistake, Throws Shit At Wall

Even if you ignore the rampant bribery allegations, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is already a massive clusterfuck. This is in part because the World Cup is set to take place in June or July, and summers in Qatar are really, really fucking hot. Like, way-too-fucking-hot-to-play-soccer hot. Now, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has admitted that the decision to put the World Cup in Qatar may have been a mistake, and is saying all kinds of dumb shit trying to explain away his dumb ideas.

From Insideworldfootball.com:

...but Mr Blatter, your ExCo knew full well, already on December 10, 2010, that a summer World Cup would be impossible to be hosted in Qatar's scorching summer... JSB:... that may well be so, and it may well be that we made a mistake at the time. On the other hand, you must also consider political and geo-political realities. The World Cup is FIFA's biggest if not only global event. Who are we, the Europeans, to demand that this event has to cater to the needs of 800 million Europeans above all, when there are over 7 billion people who populate this planet and of who 6.2 billion are not European, but who must at all times succumb to our diktat? I think it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world anymore, and that some former European imperial powers can no longer impress their will on to others in far away places, and we must accept that football has moved away from being a European and South American sport: it has become the World Sport that billions of fans are excitedly following every week, everywhere in the world.

Here Blatter is responding to the vociferous opposition he received from the English Premier League when he suggested that the World Cup should be played in the winter rather than the summer, so as to avoid the Qatari heat. Obviously, a winter World Cup—which would put the tournament right in the middle of the Premier League season—would cause all sorts of scheduling nightmares. The idea has been called " nigh-on impossible" by Premier League chief Richard Scudamore.

But do you see the bullshit Blatter is trying to pull in that quote? (He's trying to pull it through the entire interview, really.) Basically, he's saying that it's not his fault that the 2022 World Cup is all fucked because it's going to be in Qatar, it's all those damn Europeans and their Euro-centric, racist world views that are to blame! In Blatter's world, people like Scudamore are just being stubborn and imperialistic when they point out that it's stupid to screw with the whole European club schedule just because some dummies decided to send the World Cup to a burning hellscape. Blatter wants us to think that holding the World Cup in Qatar is all about spreading The Beautiful Game to the far reaches of the earth, and not the result of shady, under-the-table dealings.

(It should be noted that about two million people live in Qatar, only 15 percent of which are Qatari nationals. The rest of the population is made up of mostly foreign laborers who presumably won't be able to afford to attend any World Cup games. It's going to be all westerners and oil sheiks filling the stadium in 2022.)

So there you go. Sepp Blatter is not an idiot, and you're just racist if you think he is.

[ Insideworldfootball]