Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Qatar confident of World Cup 2022 fixture agreement

Nasser Al Khater is sure there will be a consensus on what time of the year the competition will be held and says they will work on cooling stadiums as well as fan areas
Qatar confident of World Cup 2022 fixture agreement
Nasser Al Khater, the executive director of communications and marketing of the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid, is confident that an agreement between all sides will be reached to decide if the competition will be held in winter or summer.
Fifa's decision to award the tournament to Qatar has been heavily criticised and there have been many complaints and worries expressed over the nation's human rights record, as well as health concerns regarding players and fans because of the intense summer heat.
A new task force set up by Fifa's Executive Committee met this week to discuss the fixture calendar, with the notion of moving the competition to the winter.
Al Khater says the discussions were useful and revealed the task force is still looking to reach an agreement on what time of year the World Cup will be held.
"[We held this meeting to] look at the match calendars and see what the effect would be on different leagues, different FAs et cetera. I can't tell you there's a definitive position right now - everyone's set forth some opinion based on the different options that were put up.
"Obviously therer is some resistance to move to break away from tradition. It's normal, it's absolutely natural. But also, there are many people who believe this is the World Cup, World Cups belong to the world and for that it must be able to travel all over the world.
"This could be the first time that the World Cup is moved in terms of timings and maybe it will become the norm for the future. Maybe it becomes the template we can use that makes it easier.
"We can definitely see that there are some people who are open to the idea. A lot of people. This is the most important sport event in the world and we need to make sure it's as successful as it can be.
"So from that we see there's a positive attitude and a positive outlook. Everybody has to see the practicalities of how it affects them and their leagues. This is fair. This is something we expect.
"I'm sure everybody has a specific position on it. We didn't get into the details yesterday. There will be another meeting set later on in the year where everybody will come with their proposal, positions, pros, cons risks and so forth and I'm sure there'll be a lot more coming out of that meeting. 
"As long as the international football community has a consensus we will be ready and we will be ready to host at that time. It does not affect our planning, it does not affect our delivery. As long as everybody has a consensus and everybody is in agreement then we have no issue. 
"The only thing stipulated in the contract was the World Cup has to be played in 2022. So it can either be in January and February at the beginning of 2022 or November and December at the end of 2022. Or the current dates which are June and July 2022."
Al Khater also insisted that the technology to cool stadiums is ready to go and says the organisers can experiment with ensuring fan areas are made cooler as well.
"We've had cooling technologies in stadiums in the past, we still do. We've had this technology in place. We're confident we can cool stadiums. Public area cooling - if we wanted to cool fan-fests, if we wanted to cool public squares, we wanted to make sure we could experiment with that.
"This summer, 2014, we tested two sites. One was a training site and one was an actual fan-fest. The fan fest was smaller in size than what we expect for a World Cup but it was still our first experiment. 
"Our training site was in Aspire - it's an official Fifa-sized training site - and it incorporated cooling technology. It worked fantastically. The temperatures inside was about 12 degrees cooler than it was outside. The humidity was at around 35 per cent - which is the ideal temperature. 
"The fan zone was an incredible facility where people came and watched the games - also the temperatures there were lowered by around 12-13 degrees to around 22 degrees. It was very nice. We're very happy with the results, we're very happy with the success."
He also says the attitudes from European officials has been open and maintains Fifpro have nothing to worry about when it comes to the health of players at the World Cup.
"There is an attitude of openness and there is an attitude of positivity. Everybody wants to find the solution. Everybody wants to make sure there is the ideal solution for the World Cup and minimum disruption for their leagues. I think that's the principle that everybody is working towards. We didn't get into the specific details about specific leagues or federations.
"Fifpro was there representing the players and for them the main concern was health. We know the health factor is not going to be an issue. We're going to have cooled training sites. We're going to have cooled stadiums. We're going to have cooled public areas. It's normal. This is their right, this is their job, they're protecting the health of the players. We have no issue with that. They were actually proposing for moving to the winter."

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