I hope you're right. The idea that soccer will be played in 120F is insanity to me. They better have some awesome refrigerated domes over there!
It will be in Qatar, heat and human rights be damned. FIFA cares about money and only money. Just look at its issues with poor refereeing, racism, etc. Good old Sepp and FIFA only relented on goal-line technology after several gaffes before and after the 2010 Cup (England) and only when grumblings started to come down from major corporate sponsors. Same with racism, though that is still a major issue just based on what has happened in 2014 alone. The only way the 2022 Cup is pulled or re-scheduled is if major corporate sponsors bail on FIFA and the money lost becomes greater than the money 'donated' to FIFA by the oil sheiks.
On a related note, it is really interesting to see is the number of cities bailing on the 2022 Winter Olympics due to costs. Munich and Davos-St. Moritz (Switzerland) bailed first followed by Krakow and Stockholm. Oslo’s bid is on very shaky ground politically. Lviv in the Ukraine has other issues. That leaves only 2 sure bids. Almaty in basked by an Oil Tycoon (sound familiar?) in a country where the general population has no say in the bid. As for Beijing, whose people also cannot vote on the bid, the 2008 Summer Olympic host would hold the ‘stadium’ events while the mountain and snow event would be held 120+ miles away. WTF? Look like cities, at least democratic cities, are realizing that the cost of hosting the Olympics (the one event larger than the World Cup) outweigh the honor and marketing of hosting them. Thus, the only hosts left are various oligarchies run by Oil and other business tycoons whose people have no say in hosting. That is not an attractive background for corporate sponsors. Trust me, FIFA is watching this.
http://espn.go.com/olympics/story/_/id/10984325/krakow-withdraws-2022-winter-olympics-bid
Back to Qatar, what the heck is Qatar, a country with a population equal to New Mexico (2 million) stuffed into a country the size of Delaware, going to do with the stadiums after the Cup is over? The plans are for 12 stadiums, some of which will be enclosed and fully air conditioned though the technology does not yet exist to comfortably cool such a large volume of air when it is 120 F outside, including 1 stadium over 80K (permanent), 1 stadium temporarily expanded to 60K plus 2 temporarily expanded from 20K to 40K. If you feel bad for the 2014 Cup teams who have to play in Manaus, wait until the 2022 draw comes out and some teams have to play in an outside vendor in Qatar in August. As a comparison, the UK has 63 million people and its beloved Premiership has 20 teams. The UK has just 17 stadiums with a capacity of over 40K, which includes 3 stadiums between 50K and 60K, and 8 over 60K. Of the 8 stadiums over 60K, only 2 are the home pitch for a Premier soccer team (Man U and Arsenal), a 3rd is home for a Scottish Premier team (Celtic), while the other 5 are either Rugby or special event venues.
