2022 World Cup

Qatar has been awarded the 2022 World Cup. This isn't sour grapes that the U.S. was its primary competition for the '22 WC, although they should have been chosen.

The U.S. promised an efficient and spectacular WC. We offer an intact, continually developed infrastructure featuring both state of the art football and soccer stadiums with easy access to airports and hotels. We have a diverse population and a somewhat untapped soccer market that is rapidly expanding. Many of the world's biggest companies call the USA home and they have a chance to spend big at the greatest sporting event in the world. We sent you a former Leader of the Free World and Morgan Freedman, and neither was bought in France.

What didn't we have? The desert and soaring heat (unless you wanted to send two play-in teams to Death Valley), the one major city and 1.6M people and oh-by-the-way the Shariah Law.
Yes, everyone's favorite imposition. Fortunately, Qatar is liberal and there is alcohol but no drinking or being drunk in public. Indecency laws are not so lenient. Sounds like a good host for a month-long party.

Qatar is an energy rich nation, with vast oil and natural gas reserves so they can surely develop the infrastructure before 2022 and which will help power the air conditioned stadiums. It certainly won't struggle to pay for labor, with sponsorship laws that are in essence a new iteration of modern day slavery. Maybe 12 years is enough time for change, as Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifda Al Thani has started to do since 1995. But Qatar has been reluctant to do so for centuries.

If the U.S. had to lose, it should have been to Australia, which put on a fantastic Olympics a decade ago and has similar infrastructure. The fact that Qatar won with their mercenary representatives shows the backroom wheeling and dealing of FIFA.