Rusia and Qatar?

Photo Credit: football.uk.reuters.com

Today Fifa announced what lucky countries would be hosting the 2018 and 2022 World Cup. The United States was a finalist for the 2022 bid, along with Qatar, Japan, and Australia.

I'll cut to the chase, Fifa made two intriguing decisions for the host nations... For 2018 Fifa chose Russia, over England, the "Motherland of Football," as the head of Fifa Sepp Blatter put it. A controversial decision, let's look at it.

Russia draws at most 20,000 for there local league games, nothing compared to England and other European nations. Russia is not known for it's soccer, although they usually have a solid squad. Russia did not qualify for this past World Cup and their best finish was 4th when they were still the Soviet Union.

It looked like England was the best choice, the other two candidates were Netherlands/Belgium and Espania/Portugal.

What made this decision controversial was the fact that Vladimir Putin declined to attend the event Thursday, citing that he feels the actions taken against some of the committee members voting (these members were accused of taking kickbacks) was a smear against Rusia. He didn't explain how it was a smear against Rusia getting the bid, but he did say he felt Fifa was corrupt and no longer felt good about his country's bid.

Vladimir Putin called Fifa corrupt... that's bad... Granted his statements are a little confusing, because they took action against guys taking money, but he felt that by doing that it was a smear campaign against Russia... but he was onto something...

Then it came time to announce the 2022 World Cup bid winner. To me, there were only two worthy choices: USA and Australia.

Fifa felt differently.

When Blatter announced Qatar won the bid, my reaction was "WHO?!?!?!"

Let's dig a little deeper into what makes Qatar a "qualified host nation"
1) Qatar is smaller than Connecticut
2) The population is less than the city of Houston
3) In the summer it gets up to 120 degrees, even 130 degrees. Great soccer weather
4) Qatar has never qualified for a World Cup.
5) They have a ton of money

If you guys couldn't tell, there is only one thing on that board that got them a bid. MONEY. Fifa is a corrupt organization that disguises itself as ambassadors.

It's all about who can bribe the most, and congrats to Russia and Qatar, you have the biggest checkbooks. I have to break this up into two more blogs, just so you guys don't read a giant post, but here's my initial post on the matter.

Up next, why Qatar over the United States is the WRONG choice.