The UK bookies who recently pushed Qatar into the the favourite position for the World Cup were right.
Against all odds, Qatar has won the 2022 World Cup.
Admittedly, Edwin Eduardo, writing about
Qatar 2022 World Cup chances for QatarVisitor.com earlier this year, had assessed their chances as being extremely good:
Qatar is very close to going down in history as the first ever Arab nation to host the World Cup.
And as we quoted then, the Fifa President was keen on the idea:
The Arabic world deserves a World Cup. They have 22 countries and have not had any opportunity to organise the tournament.
Huge hurdles
But Qatar still had huge hurdles to overcome in winning the bid.
The FIFA team assessed Qatar as having the riskiest bid, while the US queried whether Qatar intended to air-condition the whole country.
Not so often voiced were other problems: the difficulty of a conservative Islamic country playing host to thousands of drunken fans, the issue of Israel...
These hurdles still have to be overcome. But for now Qatar, which will be the first Arab country ever to win the Qatar World Cup, can ignore the inevitable sniping and celebrate.
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