Quote:
Originally Posted by gusmahler
What?
What is confusing about that? Soccer has been and always will be the number 1 sport in the Middle East. Their kids start kicking soccer balls around when they are 4, while we are shooting our basketballs and pretending to be the latest hotshot quarterback. Are you saying they don't have a winning tradition or something? That's true, but don't see why it is particularly relevant when rewarding fans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gusmahler
1) Because we're not confident it will be ready in time. A country with a $100B/yr GDP spending $50B on the World Cup is a little excessive, no?
2) I'll grant you that stadiums are easy to build if you have money. Infrastructure is something completely different. Does Qatar have the capability to host as many people as will be coming to the WC? No, they don't have the airport capacity or hotel capacity to do so. They could build a new airport and hotels, but they'll be empty every year except 2022, so it makes little economic sense to build them. US, Japan, Korea, Australia easily have the travel and accommodations to hold teams and fans.
They had a $12 billion surplus last year. If by some unforeseen disaster they need more money, they will just easily get financing from Dubai or someone while pledging their endless oil and gas reserves. If Great Depression 3.0 or whatever happens and that is somehow not an option, then yes we can have an emergency move to some country that already has stadiums and whatnot. Its a pretty unlikely event with a very easy solution though, so don't know why it should outweigh the prospect of an awesome spectacle. And lol at worrying about economic sense with oil sheiks, though like someone else said, they will probably end up pulling up a bunch of cruise ships for the hotel problem.