By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
July 25 – Growing calls for switching the Qatar World Cup to winter – now led by FIFA president Sepp Blatter – have taken a dramatic new twist with Germany’s top FIFA official declaring it was a “blatant mistake” to award to the 2022 tournament to the Gulf state in the first place.
Former German football federation boss Theo Zwanziger, who has been enjoying an increasingly influential role on FIFA’s executive committee as the driving force behind the reform process, says even moving the World Cup from the searing summer heat would not be ideal.
Zwanziger’s executive committee predecessor, German legend Franz Beckenbauer, was widely reported as being the member who gave Australia its one vote at the 2010 ballot and is understood to have been stunned when FIFA ultimately awarded the tournament to Qatar.
“It was a blatant mistake,” Zwanziger, who has been making friends and enemies in equal measure, told SportBild magazine, adding that Blatter’s apparent u-turn proved most of the executive committee had voted “against a fair awarding procedure” when the ballot took place two and half years ago.
Zwanziger said that rather than reschedule the tournament, it should be awarded to someone else. “If the decision was really a mistake it should be lifted and should not become an even bigger burden for those who are not involved by changing it to the winter.”
The highly sensitive idea of a revote does have limited support within some FIFA circles but is unlikely to happen without causing a storm of legal protest. Qatar may be oppressively hot for at least half the year but there is no valid economic or political reason for taking the tournament away from the Gulf.
Yet Zwanziger said shifting it to the winter months would put the unity of German football in danger, appearing to agree with the stance taken by the English Premier League.
“Changing the World Cup to the winter is going deep into the structures of European national federations and also amateur football in Germany,” he said. “A change in playing schedules does not only affect the Bundesliga but continues affecting lower divisions due to the link with promotion and relegation. The game pyramid is in danger and so is the unity of German football.”
Zwanziger’s comments are in stark contrast, however, with those of Britain’s FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce who said in an interview with Insideworldfootball earlier this week that moving the tournament to winter would make “common sense” for everyone involved – not least the players – and that the leagues had almost a decade to prepare for what would be a one-off.
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