In a stunning pair of decisions Thursday, FIFA, world soccer's governing body, voted to award the 2018 Men's World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.
It was a case of FIFA boldly going where FIFA has not gone before. The World Cup has never been staged in either the former Eastern bloc or in the Middle East.
England and the U.S. originally had been favored to host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, respectively, but they fell by the wayside earlier in the voting in Switzerland by the 22 memebers of FIFA's executive committee.
The twin decisions were announced in Zurich by Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, FIFA's president, and were greeted by spontaneous celebrations in the winning countries.
"We go to new lands," Blatter said.
Seems fair to me. There are stadiums in the world outside the Rose Bowl and Wembley, guys. And hey, I'm looking forward to 40,000 vodka-drunk people playing balalaikas as loudly as possible just to annoy people. It'll be like Fiddler On The Roof meets Stomp. How can you not like that? Time to brush up on my Russian from high school.
(Qatar might not be as much fun, admittedly, but good for them.)
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As someone who lives within spitting distance of the Rose Bowl, I say that Russia and Qatar can *have* their World Cup tournaments. The BCS championship game and a big ass parade down the middle of Pasadena are one thing the City does well, but dealing with 30,000 drunken unruly futbol fans is another thing entirely. (The Brazilian fans in 1994 were especially unruly, OMFG.)
Not surprised Qatar won the bid. Money talks. And they have so freakin much of it. The bitter side of me hopes their air conditioning breaks in the stadiums in the 120 F heat; hate to have to answer for that!
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