Heat On Fifa Over World Cup Switch
Updated: 3:03am UK, Thursday 03 October 2013
By Paul Kelso, Sports Correspondent
Of all the questions raised by Qatar's World Cup, the one most in need of an answer is the least likely to be addressed when Fifa's executive committee convenes in Zurich this week.
According to the short note in the agenda under the heading "sports politics", discussion will be limited to the timing of Qatar 2022.
If Fifa President Sepp Blatter gets his way, the committee will agree in principle to move the tournament away from its traditional - but in Qatar potentially dangerous - date of June and July, to a more temperate slot in the autumn or winter.
There will then follow a period of consultation in which all the stakeholders affected are talked round or persuaded through compromises that could yet involve financial compensation.
There will be much debate about when the tournament should take place, with everyone from the Premier League to the NFL canvassed and conciliated.
That is Blatter's plan, although he will face resistance from Michel Platini.
The Uefa president is proving just as elusive in a blazer as he was as player.
Having voted for Qatar and then been the first to call for a move to winter, he is now in favour of deferring a decision.
Whatever the outcome, expect far more to be said about when the World Cup should take place, rather than whether it should be held in Qatar at all.
From the moment the tiny Gulf state was chosen, it was as clear as the Zurich mountain air that it would be problematic at best and a catastrophic folly at worst.
It should not have needed experts to explain that playing the world's greatest football tournament in the desert in summer was lunacy, but Fifa commissioned some anyway.
They concluded it was a major challenge and ranked Qatar fourth out of five bidders.
That did not stop 14 of the wise men on the executive committee from voting Doha.
Several of them have since been stripped of their Fifa blazers, ejected for corruption or resigned before they could be pushed.
Those that remain, and their successors, will attempt to prevent the entire deal unravelling.
We can speculate as to why Blatter lacks the stomach to do the obvious and re-run the 2022 race with Qatar transparently bidding for a winter tournament. But it is clear that is not his immediate priority.
Self-preserving instincts to the fore, he is hoping to engineer a grand compromise that keeps legal challenges at bay and allows him to run for a fifth term as president in 2015, something he once promised he would not do.
Europe's professional leagues will complain long and loud but as long as Fifa retains the backing of a rump of national associations, they will have little choice but to follow suit.
A November tournament that avoids a clash with the Winter Olympics remains the likeliest outcome, should Blatter play his hand right.
But there is one joker left in the pack - Michael Garcia, attorney-at-law and independent ethics investigator of Fifa's myriad alleged sins.
After nine months at bay, next week he embarks on a world tour of 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidders, pledging, I am told, to "make waves".
If he turns up something new, or makes any of the many alleged abuses of bidding rules stick, Qatar's World Cup may not happen at all.
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