Earlier this week the discredited FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) organisation announced the recommendation that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar would be delayed from the summer to the winter. It wasn’t front page sports news – well not here in the UK anyway. Why was that you may wonder? It is because anybody who knows anything about football would have forecast that move a long while ago (and despite poor odds probably put a large bet on it, as well).

You see Qatar, an oil rich tiny country of now two million people in the Persian Gulf region, is a desert state that is bloody hot in the day and sometimes times extremely cold at night. It is not a possible place to play international games of football in the summer, at some fifty degrees centigrade combined with high humidity. Why then you might ponder, were they honored with the most prestigious of all the professional football competitions? Perhaps it could have been a lot to do with money, skullduggery, and chicanery?

Did then FIFA not know about summer heat problems in Qatar when they chose it? Oh yes they certainly did, and moreover they knew it presented a high risk. So why did they proceed then? Money, skullduggery, and chicanery?

Sixteen months ago it was obvious that the Cup would be moved to the winter IF it remained with Qatar – the climate then is a bit less harsh, with half the summer temperature. The Qataris had claimed we could rely on them perfecting stadium & training pitches with solar powered air conditioning systems, that would save players and spectators from potential health risks & death in summer conditions. Nobody believed it, did they? No, it may have been technically ‘do-able’ on a small scale but impossibly difficult on the major level required, or so most experts think?

Anyway, what is all the fuss about over such a move then? Is it anything to do with the interests of football fans do you think? Don’t be silly – its primarily all about money as usual isn’t it? It will cause massive disruption to the football competitions in other countries – specifically European. You see this Cup is always played in the ‘off-season’ after all the clubs have made their multi-millions at home.

So how do you think it will all be resolved then? Change the venue host country perhaps? No, but you probably guessed it: FIFA will be asked to financially ‘compensate’ all the professional clubs and national organizations (who doubtlessly will have been working out their strategy and exaggerated bill for the past year) – all to be paid by the over-rich Qataris, wouldn’t you guess?

The likelihood of FIFA re-assigning the 2022 World Cup to original front runners Australia, Japan, South Korea, United States, or indeed to any other credible country is zero – you don’t have to back-down when you make a disgusting (if not squalid) mistake, when you are an all powerful unfettered organisation infested with incompetent, uncaring , unaccountable, or even corrupt members, do you?

The chaos that the Qatar Cup tournament will now cause to our UK leagues, in-country cups, and international competitions is simply another scandal to hit ‘out of control’ FIFA, following-on from substantiated allegations of corruption and sleaze. Certainly what England ‘should’ do is withdraw from the 2022 World Cup and set up in conjunction with other European national football associations, an alternative tournament to be played in a country that has the facilities already in place to handle it – that would avoid massive costs. But dream on everybody – the English FA doesn’t have the guts to do it, do they?

Some football pundits in England have greeted the time-shifted finals to Nov/Dec as good news, claiming that it will give England a good chance of winning the World Cup once again as it will mean our players are fresh and not knackered after a hard competitive season.

That is rubbish of course, because we have a crap team now because our Premier League football pitches are overcrowded with foreign players (preventing local talent getting any experience & developing into world class players), all our clubs are owned and run by foreigners (who care not a jot about football let alone the England team), and the teams are for some unimaginable reason managed by overseas recruited mercenaries (some of who have little English language and are determined to sign even more non-English players). By 2022 that will not change so England will still have a crap team, don’t you think?

The stench of many years of sleaze involving FIFA doesn’t go away and there are apparently inadequate criminal sanctions that member countries have introduced so far to tackle cases like an international organisation like it?

[The football fans of seven years time will need to employ a clever twelve month season planner to cover the mayhem of fixture changes caused by Qatar’s World Cup – good luck everyone].