{"id":18233,"date":"2014-05-16T08:48:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T15:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=18233"},"modified":"2014-05-16T08:48:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T15:48:00","slug":"fifa-president-calls-qatar-world-cup-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2014\/05\/16\/fifa-president-calls-qatar-world-cup-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA President calls Qatar World Cup mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tasnim &#8211; ZURICH, <strong>Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, said that it was a mistake to award Qatar the football World Cup in 2022 because of the searing summer climate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blatter made the remarks in an interview with the Swiss television station RTS.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if the decision was a mistake due to the high temperatures, he replied, &#8220;Of course, it\u2019s an error. You know, everyone makes mistakes in life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The technical report of Qatar indicated it was quite hot during the summer. However, the executive committee, with an overwhelming majority, decided that the games would be in Qatar.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, he denied that Qatar had bought the tournament, saying, &#8220;No, definitely not. These allegations are driven by politics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Qatar was awarded the rights to the tournament, which has always been played in the northern summer months, in 2010, Al Jazeera reported.<\/p>\n<p>Critics questioned how a tournament could be played in the humid Qatari summer, where temperatures can reach 50C and rarely dip below 40C in the day. Qatar promised air-conditioned stadiums and a rapid transport system to get fans to the games in comfort.<\/p>\n<p>It is not the first time Blatter has made such remarks, but they are certainly the most forthright. In September 2013, he told the Inside World Football website that &#8220;it may well be that we made a mistake&#8221; in the awarding the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>In January, a public split emerged within FIFA after Jerome Valcke, the secretary-general, said the tournament could not be held in the summer and would be moved to the winter months. Other members of the body quickly denied a decision had been taken.<\/p>\n<p>Qatar has also faced an international campaign to improve the dangerous conditions in which laborers work on World Cup projects, and their lack of rights under the kefala employment system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tasnim &#8211; ZURICH, Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, said that it was a mistake to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":13991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-world-cup"],"views":4978,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}