FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010 file photo, FIFA President Sepp Blatter announces Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup during the announcement of the host country for the 2022 soccer World Cup in Zurich, Switzerland. A FIFA task force on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015 recommended playing the tournament in Qatar at the end of the year in 2022 to avoid the summer heat. Temperatures in the Gulf emirate routinely top 40 degrees C (104 degrees F) when the World Cup traditionally kicks off in June. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)Anja Niedringhaus/The Associated Press
We've been looking at this all wrong.
The 2022 World Cup is just a clever experiment to test the limits of human tolerance for hubris and brazenness. A sly installation of geopolitical performance art, if you will, dreamed up by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association and underwritten unwittingly by fans of the world's most popular game.
It's the only intelligible explanation for a calculated, years-long campaign to alienate not just member federations but sponsors, commercial partners, ticket-buyers, viewers and the athletes themselves.
FIFA's performance in the lead-up to Qatar 2022 has made the NHL's shenanigans look like a grade-school play. Only a pro-level provocateur could come up with this latest twist: a decree that the most-watched sporting event on the planet will, for the first time ever, interrupt the major domestic league schedules and be held in winter.
They've even gone full-bore and tentatively scheduled the final for Dec. 23. A few days later, amidst outcry, that was pulled back to "no later the Dec. 18." At least it won't be blast-furnace hot on the pitch.
As far as tipoffs go, it's not very subtle. There's already been a fantastically corrupt bidding process – even by FIFA's exalted standards – an amateurish cover-up and an attending farcical investigation.
The bid has also involved accusations of working conditions akin to slavery on Qatar's stadium construction sites, and large-scale workplace deaths. All of this was predicted. And Qatar was awarded the right to host the World Cup anyhow.
Not even bumptious FIFA potentate Sepp Blatter can keep a straight face much longer. No, it stretches credulity too far. Who wants to be remembered for erecting a shimmering monument to criminality, cravenness and money-grubbing? Surely the curtain will soon be pulled back – and it will be revealed that Mr. Blatter is actually Banksy. A deep bow will be taken by the charmers in Geneva who managed to hoodwink billions of soccer fans into thinking they were all a bunch of crooks.
Any other dénouement would mean FIFA no longer cares about doing its filthy business out in the open; it would entrench the body as one of the most venal organized endeavours in history.
Even the mob has rules.