World cup mess:How foxnews generation made Blatter look like a visionary prophet

All have flaws, all have pros. It depends on what you want to see

In a series of three posts -this is the final part, I made an attempt to create a countering argument against the massive stream of attacks targeting Russia, and especially Qatar. The posts do not necessarily express my personal opinion but an attempt to be outside the box and figure another version of the story. Sometimes it is important to be reminded about own flaws to become more understandable of others cons. Call it an attempt to be the devils advocate if you like (Many times I received advices to become a lawyer. hm...). But be careful, this post may contain offending views for those unwilling to read anything that doesn't echo their own believes. After the logistics, the technicalities, now we reach the misconceptions. 

World cup 2018 will take place in Russia while Qatar will host World cup 2022. Dooms day. And the ranting engines started to roar like never before. FIFA is corrupted! (No shit!). 

Then the holier-Bigger-Better than though anthem blew its horns, as predicted. Democracy! Human Rights! Environment concerns! Corruption! Terrorism! And again Terrorism! Just 'cause it sounds more convincing when you repeat it twice. 

All this ranting proves the FIFA were right to make the decisions they made. Regardless of the luxury discussions about "technicalities", this FIFAstic decision served beyond football, revealing the ugliest face of the trident engagement between Arrogance, ignorance and hypocrisy. This make people who were not that excited about FIFA's decision (count me in), stand up and bow for Blatter and co. If Football-and Sports- role is to bring people together regardless of their differences, to make them know, then this FIFAstic move proved being a master strike. 

Now heading to Qatar, the country that received most of the critic. Basically because it is an Islamic country in the Middle East. And fox-news generation visualize Middle east as a compact homogeneous Ben laden-ish block of cannibals jumping over each others' back with sharp daggers dripping blood all over the place.

Continue reading →

World cup success story: Qatar and Russia played it right, others failed.

How predictable! The easiest way to cover someone flaws and failure is to accuse others and underestimate their success. That was exactly what we witnessed in the last 24 hours after FIFA announced Russia and Qatar to host the following two worldcups, 2018 and 2022 instead of great and developing football nations like England, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and USA. At the heat of the moment, things turned ugly. I mean, really ugly.

Maybe for the first time, I had no clear favorites. Yet, if I had a vote, I would have voted for Russia and Australia taking in consideration their geographic location on the planet’s map and the fact that they never hosted the competition before.  No doubt, Middle East is a fitting region for a worldcup –again if you browse the map of previous worldcup tournaments. But Qatar? I don’t know about that. UAE (with Qatar maybe), Egypt, Morocco, or some other co-hosting creative arrangements like Syria-Lebanon, Syria-Jordan, etc… In that deserted corner of my mind, I could sense the cross paths leading Qatar to pull out a surprise, but I refused to believe it will happen that fast. Till the last moment, I thought Qatar’s campaign was more a PR project promoting the country, and creating a portfolio for the following attempts. I was aware they WILL get a decent number of votes, though not that many.

Continue reading →