da apostaganha： “I back the Qatar bid. I admire their purpose and vision. It’s achievable. Addressing the hot climate issue and transporting the stadia to countries is very clever” The erstwhile, forthright and entirely forthcoming endorsement of Sir Alex Ferguson who, along with Zinedine Zidane and a number of other highly pai…err….esteemed luminaries leant their considerable gravitas to Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid. It would be interesting to hear his thoughts now, as FIFA president Sepp Blatter admits he expects a winter held tournament, or moreover what his thoughts would’ve been in 2022 were he still in charge of Manchester United then and not – as is more likely – sipping himself satisfied in a nice beach front holiday home (possibly in Qatar) feet up on an expensive Habitat coffee table, holding court with his grand children and regaling them with tales of the time he hit David Beckham square in the face with a pair of size 10s. He probably won’t be telling them of the time he said of the FA’s decision to play a winter friendly in Qatar “It’s a coach’s nightmare, especially if you are in the middle of a European campaign and going for cups and titles. You have all these fixtures and you have the intrusion of a friendly international game in some unknown country, so that is a definite thorn in everyone’s flesh.”
da leao： Ironically (although I’m never quite sure anymore) Ferguson and many of his cohorts in the big old sack race they call Premiership management have long pushed for a winter break. This is surely stretching the limits of what they were after though and a long, competitive, intensive, distracting and still really rather hot excursion into the desert right slap bang in the middle of the Premiership season will be a certain thorn in everyone’s flesh come 2022.
It’s still unclear how this will work logistically, though it’s nice that Mr Blatter, in all his infinite wisdom, chose to break the news early – a mere few months after deciding the superiority and suitability of the bid – that the giant “clever” super fans that were supposed to ease all worries of the first mass casualty World Cup were in fact a bit unrealistic after all, and will join the Back to the Future hoverboard in the realm of things that they really should invent one day but never bloody do.
There are of course many things that would prove more disruptive to the English Premier League season than a simple winter tournament; Forcing the players to wear cast iron ankle bracelets for one, or introducing the exciting potential of live animals into the mix, but it’ll never the less prove a chore of some sort. Perhaps ending the season two weeks earlier every season for twelve years might work? It would help ease us into the change rather than suddenly shifting our seasonal calendars violently. But then we’d be stuck with a ridiculously out of whack League for another twelve years whilst we eased it back into regularity.
The most obvious way of course is just to dump it right in there, between the hectic Christmas period and the resumption of the Champions League. Where the other slightly more sensible European Leagues have their break. The FA Cup would have to be put back a bit, but that’d work right? I mean by 2022 it probably won’t mean much more than the Carling Cup anyway, and nobody would mind moving that. Or just getting rid of it. And how would it affect those already established aforementioned winter breaks? Would they scrap it? Or just have it a little earlier/later? The Germans would probably soldier on but telling the Spanish they can’t have a siesta isn’t going to go down too well in Iberia. They might just take their ball and refuse to play.
Those intending to go would have to switch their summer holidays to the winter too, but going back to work after Christmas is always a pain anyway isn’t it? So who wouldn’t rather just not bother for a couple more months? Bosses will understand.
In the end we’ll do what we always do in good ol’ Blighty, grumble about it for a bit before simply stumbling through with gritted teeth and a slightly higher subscription rate to the Daily Mail. Some people might even enjoy themselves (though probably not the ones reading the Daily Mail) and whatever happens will be logistically wrangled competently enough somehow.
But why oh why couldn’t they have just been up front about it to begin with rather than go through this silly tortuous charade? Just say they always wanted to put it in the Middle East rather than making everyone bid for it and pretending all this fanciful technology was going to work? It’s clear that Qatar could’ve put together a bidding team of Colonel Gaddafi, John Leslie and a potato and still gotten the nod so this whole elaborate corruption inviting flash dance to convince the World they were actually being swayed by the merits of bids just seems so infuriating. Come on now, we’re not that stupid FIFA. There were never ever going to be any super fans were there? It’s fine, I forgive you. I’ve spent 25 years waiting for the hoverboard as it is.
Follow Oscar on Twitter here; http://twitter.com/oscarpyejeary where you can join his ongoing quest to get the word Bangerang into every day popular usage..Bangerang!
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