Qatar 1, US 0 in bid to host World Cup

By Dale McFeatters

Was it something we did? Something we said?

The U.S. has again struck out in a bid to host a prestigious international sporting event.

U.S. soccer officials were desperately hoping to win the 2022 World Cup, confident of repeating the success of 1994, still a record for number of tickets sold. The marquis event and the growing popularity of soccer, the officials reasoned, might finally and permanently launch the Utopian thought of soccer moving into the firmament of big league American sports.

But we lost to Qatar, a thumb-shaped peninsula in the Persian Gulf. Nothing against Qatar but it is short on both scenery and people. The CIA's fact book describes it as "mostly flat and barren desert covered with loose sand and gravel." And it's hot. An average of 106 degrees when the Cup is normally played with the occasional furnace-like 130-degree day.

The CIA says the population is 840,426, putting right behind Detroit. The Associated Press says it is 1.7 million, slightly larger than Phoenix. The discrepancy is perhaps due to the vast number of foreign workers, who outnumber the indigenous population as will the fans when the Cup is played.

Qatar is not generally counted among the soccer superpowers and indeed has never qualified for Cup play. What it does have is oil and gas and the second highest per capital income in the world.

This rejection comes following last year's failure, despite a personal plea by President Barack Obama, to land the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. At least this time we lasted until the final round. In the Olympics competition, we were blown off right away. Rio de Janeiro won the honor and the Olympic committee must no doubt be pleased that the Brazilian army is recapturing Brazil's neighborhoods from heavily armed and extremely violent drug gangs.

FIFA, soccer's governing world body, awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia, which is already host to the 2014 Winter Olympics. The big loser there was England, which, despite a claim to have invented soccer, last hosted a Cup in 1966. What was perhaps most painful: England was voted out in the first round.

Qatar has pledged to renovate three existing stadiums and build nine new ones. The advantage of being a small country is that travel times between the stadiums will be very short. The disadvantage of being a small country is that, after the Cup, it doesn't need the stadiums. The Qataris say they will dismantle them and give the stadiums to poor countries.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said of the decision: "We go to new lands." With Qatar, they've certainly done that.

Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).