Talk of winter switch for Qatar World Cup "premature" says Bin Hammam

By Andrew Warshaw

January 14 – The head of Asian football has come out fighting by insisting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will not be switched from summer to winter or be shared with other Gulf nations.

Mohamed Bin Hammam (pictured), rapidly emerging as a key player in the current landscape of football politics, said the tiny Middle East state was sticking by its original candidature and that no-one would persuade them otherwise.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter, with whom AFC boss Bin Hammam has had an increasingly frosty relationship of late, has repeatedly stated in a variety of interviews that consideration should be given to the Qatar World Cup being moved to the winter months to avoid the searing summer heat.

That was followed this week by UEFA President Michel Platini’s equally contentious suggestion that the tournament be shared by the entire Gulf region because of Qatar’s size.

But Bin Hammam, himself from Qatar, said neither would happen.

“We’re not interested – Qatar can stand alone and organise by itself,” he said.

“We are very happy and we are promising the world that we are going to organise an amazing World Cup in June and July.

“I’m really not very impressed by these opinions to distribute the game over the Gulf or change the time from July to January.

“It’s actually premature – it’s people’s opinions and they’re just discussing it with no basis.

“It’s not up to one, two or three members of FIFA to talk about changing the time without getting the real stakeholders’ opinions.”

Speaking to Sky, Bin Hammam added: “I know that football in Europe has quite a history, it is quite a business involving a lot of financial, media, marketing – a lot of things.

“It is unfair to these people that we talk about changing the calendar or the time without their full consultation and their full approval and their full agreement – I’m actually not happy to see that happening without the real stakeholders’ part of this discussion.”

On Thursday, Iran’s coach at the Asian Cup, Afshin Ghotbi, said it would be better to re-open the entire bidding process than to allow other Gulf nations to co-host with Qatar.

“I think if they are now talking about sharing it with other countries, it is very unfair to the United States, to Australia, all the other countries that were bidding at the same time,” he suggested.

“My feeling is if they want to take a decision on that then they should go back to the bidding countries and ask them to bid again.”

The latest tit-for-tat comments are evidence of a growing spat between Bin Hammam and Blatter in the build-up to the FIFA presidential election on June 1.

Suggestions in some newspapers, however, that they will go head-to-head for top job in world football are premature.

Also wide of the mark are reports that the 2022 tournament can only be switched if Qatar makes a formal request.

insideworldfootball has learned that the idea, if deemed a serious runner, would almost certainly at some point be put to the entire 208-nation FIFA membership rather than just the Executive Committee, a majority of whom voted for Qatar.

Were a vote to switch gain sufficient backing, Bin Hammam’s credibility as AFC President – already hit by last week’s election of Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan to replace the Bin Hammam-backed Chung Mong-joon as Asia’s FIFA vice-president – would be further undermined given that no mention of a possible winter World Cup was mentioned in the original bid documentation.

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