This blog is about the FIFA World Cup that is taking place in Qatar in 2022. In short, the aim is to follow anything that happens in the world of world cup football and share this with other enthousiasts. To get more information what the blog is all about, please visit the description page.

First some minor background about the world cup in Qatar:

• On 2 December 2010, the host nations were announced for both the 2018 and 2022 edition of the world cup after a voting process performed by the FIFA executive committee, consisting of 22 elected members. Whereas the 2018 FIFA World Cup was to be held in Russia, the 2022 edition went to Qatar. Other contenders for that World Cup were the United States and fellow Asian country Japan, which had both previously hosted a world cup in the past (USA in 1994 and Japan in 2002, albeit joint with South Korea).
• It is the first time a FIFA World Cup will be hosted in Qatar and also the first time in the Middle East region, and only the second time that the tournament will be held on the Asian continent (after South Korea and Japan in 2002).
• The allocation of the World Cup to Qatar has been met with much controversy. First of all, there have been strong signs of corruption surrounding the Qatar and the members of FIFA at the time when Sepp Blatter was president of the organization. See Garcia Report for more information on that topic.
• Secondly, there has been strong among football fans due to the lack of footballing history in the country. The Qatar national football team has never been able to qualify for a World Cup, but will, as being the host, be automatically qualified for the tournament. At the time Qatar was announced as host, it was ranked #112 on the FIFA World Ranking. Qatar has been able to grow the sport massively in the past decade, highlighted by becoming champion of the AFC Asian Cup early 2019 for the first time. This has contributed to significantly to Qatar’s current position on the world ranking as #55, in the region of African powerhouses such as Ghana, Cameroon and Egypt. Furthermore, it has been able to attract some world class players in the names of Xavi and Wesley Sneijder, whereas the influence of Qatari’s in world football is not to be underestimated, as for example top European clubs are owned by Qatari sheiks, most significantly in the form of Paris Saint-Germain FC and the role of Qatari enterprises (Qatar Airways) as main sponsors of major football clubs, such as FC Barcelona and AS Roma.
• Thirdly, Qatar is a very small country, namely the 158th ranked country in the world (11,581 km²/4,471 sq mi). It will be in fact the smallest country in the history of the FIFA World Cup, dethroning Switzerland, which hosted the world cup in 1954. This would make it difficult to host a tournament due to the magnitude of a world cup, as 4 of the 8 stadiums purposively built for the world cup are based in the nation’s capital Doha. Also the climate in Qatar has not been considered optimal in many eyes, as the temperatures around June/July when the tournament is generally held, can reach up to 50 degrees celsius averaging around 35 degrees in the day. This has led to the decision by FIFA to reschedule the tournament towards wintertime. This was announced in 2018 and will mean that the tournament will be played in November and December of 2022.
• Fourthly, there have been many concerns about the functioning of the Qatari government, especially concerning the treatment of human rights linked to racism and discrimation against homosexuals, as well as alleged slavery of migrant workers in the constructions surrounding the world cup venues as many Nepalese and Indian migrants have died during the works and have been discovered to be working in extremely unsafe conditions as well as to be living in inhumane circumstances. There have also been allegations that the state government of Qatar financially aids terrorist groups.
• Lastly, there have been talks to increase the number of participating teams at the world cup from 32 to 48, as has already been scheduled for the world cup in 2026, which will be hosted in Canada, the United States and Mexico. However, FIFA has concluded that the plan would be unfeasible, since it is unlikely FIFA could find another host nation on such a short notice as Qatar was deemed to be too small to host that many games.

All in all, Qatar is considered by many as unsuited to host the World Cup. Fact of the matter is, that it will probably go through, especially taking into account the amount of money and time has been put in preparing the world cup. FIFA has thus far never intended to back down and disregard Qatar and this will probably also not happen in the coming years. I think it is unevitable that the world cup that more stories and allegations will become public in the prelude of the world cup as november 2022 gets closer and closer. Nevertheless, I want to make sure that this blog is generally only focused on the football side of things and not the politics. That being said, I think that those two are inseparable for world cups in general as we have seen in the last couple of editions (South Africa 2010, Brazil 2014, Russia 2018). So let’s put the light on the things we love and are passionate about, that being the beautiful game and try to forget about the politics, which will be well-covered by all types of media outlets anyway.

Having said all that, we can move to the football. I will briefly describe how the qualification process will work and what the important dates are regarding the qualifications and final tournament.

As per usual, the FIFA World Cup qualification is divided among six confederations which represent their respective continent. Each confederation has their own qualifiers and they are lined out in very different ways, mostly depending on the number of country members in a confederation and the quality of the teams within that confederation, which eventually determines the number of teams that will be able qualify for the world cup for each confederation. In general, the first qualifying matches will be played on the 6th of June and the final deciding games will be played in March 2022, before the world cup officially starts in November of that same year. I will include an overview of the different paths.

Finally some important dates and facts concerning the FIFA World Cup 2022:

The final draw is scheduled to take place in April 2022.

The tournament starts on 21 November 2022. The final will be played on 18 December 2022.

The largest stadium is planned to be the Lusail Iconic Stadium in Lusail with a capacity of around 86,000. This will make it likely that it will host the final at least. Lusail is also very close to the city centre of Doha, as the stadium is less than 20 kilometres away.