I repeat, whatever the figures say ( please refer to Lies, damn lies, and statistics ) these people are dying at a rate, being treated in a manner, including being forcibly detained, that would not be allowed in any civilised country in the world. I really don't see what India has to do with this, they haven't been awarded a W/C by the supposed ruling body of the world's largest, richest sport. Qatar, however, has. With that should come the responsibilities too.
If you really believe that there is no connection between Qatar's enormous wealth, and the already proven to be corrupt FIFA awarding them the 2022 W/C, then you really are living in cloud cuckoo land. The 2022 W/C was bought and paid for, pure and simple!
I would also add again, as has been said, that as the Qataris won't allow any monitoring or collecting of data ( I wonder why!) these figures are purely an estimate.
The thing is, there's actually a very simple way to avoid this - stick more rigidly to FIFA's stadium criteria for staging a World Cup which, according to their website, is...
FIFA has a number of requirements for stadiums hosting World Cup games. One of these is capacity.
FIFA requires that a venue hosting the opening game and the final must have a net capacity of at least 80,000. For the other group matches, last 16, quarter finals and the match for third place the requirement is at least 40,000, and FIFA requests a net capacity of at least 60,000 for venues hosting the semifinals.
What they should be specifying is that these stadiums should either...
a.) Have been built or are already under construction prior to the bid being submitted
b.) Require minimal upgrading work to get them to that capacity - let's say as a rule of thumb that no stadium which needs its capacity increased by 25% or more to meet these criteria should be considered as a venue
With those two guidelines in place, let's look at the stadia for Qatar's bid...
80,000-capacity stadium - not yet built
60,000-capacity stadium - expanding the 40,000-capacity Khalifa International Stadium to 68,000-capacity
40,000-capacity stadiums - eight not yet built, plus a couple of 21,000-capacity stadiums are being doubled in capacity
Nine of their stadiums weren't built prior to their bid being submitted, and three are being expanded by more than 25% of their current capacity to meet the criteria. On that alone, Qatar are disqualified as hosts.
Looking beyond saying who can and cannot host a World Cup, there's also several longer-term benefits for nations if these guidelines were introduced, such as...
i.) A country won't be ruining their own economy to stage a World Cup
ii.) Less large-scale construction projects reduces the chances of people being injured or killed in construction accidents (in theory...)
iii.) White elephants won't be cluttering the landscape as happened with South Africa and Brazil (as well as Portugal for Euro 2004)
iv.) Clubs won't be mortgaging their futures by expanding their stadiums far beyond their average gate, such as The FA expecting Plymouth to expand Home Park from their current capacity of 19,000 (which has at least 6000 empty seats for every home game) to a capacity of 46,000
v.) Countries could agree to split the difference and co-host the World Cup, meaning the cost will be spread while two countries receive the economic benefit of hosting a World Cup. Three of the last four European Championships have had co-hosts, while the Spain/Portugal bid for 2018 certainly could've worked as they had several stadiums that either already fulfilled the criteria (Nou Camp, Bernebeu, La Cartuja, Lluis Companys in Spain, Estadio de Luiz, Estadio do Dragao and Estadio Jose Avalade in Portugal) while Valencia, Bilbao and Atletico were building new stadiums that qualified under these criteria prior to the bid being submitted
It's so simple that it's no surprise FIFA never thought of it.
. Anything that makes me think again about position I hold glibly is great. Again, the debates on the run up to the Scottish Independence referendum were fascinating. Occasionally I learn about football too!
