Qataris are to soccer what Jamaicans are to skiing

WHOSE idea was it to hold the 2022 World Cup in a little place the size of Connecticut with temperatures hotter than inside your oven? Whose idea was it to hold the world’s biggest football event, synonymous with lager, lager, lager, in a place that doesn’t do alcohol?

Only the Sahara or the South Pole would be less suitable for the World Cup than the very small, very rich, very determined Qatar.

At least they must have a longstanding, world-class reputation within the game? They might be small, and hot, and unsuitable, but they are to football what Wales is to rugby?

Er, no. The Qataris are to football what the Jamaicans are to skiing — completely unrelated. There is no footballing history.

Now, for the first time, FIFA have realised that Qatar gets very hot. Extraordinary that nobody checked the region’s weather forecast, during the palm-greasing stage of negotiations in 2010 — or did they think the Qataris are so rich that they could pay the sun to cool down? How can you install air conditioning outdoors in a city, even in one as hi-tech as Doha?

With dead Nepalis, apparently. Dead Nepalis are the real disgrace of the 2022 World Cup. The Gulf has long used labour imported from the sub-continent to build its flashy skyscrapers, clean its opulent apartments, cook its lavish food, rear its over-entitled families, and service its ostentatious tourist industry.

And now its using that labour to build its ridiculous World Cup stadia — in conditions so appalling that the unprotected, non-unionised, invisible migrant workers are dropping like flies.

I love football. Love it. Am counting down until Thursday, Jun 12, 2014, when I will be sitting in front of the telly until Sunday, Jul 13. My children can order in pizza for the duration, and the dog can walk itself — I will not be budging.

A World Cup in Brazil is perfect — Brazil is one of the greatest football nations, with a passion for the game that transcends rich and poor. But Qatar? WTF, FIFA?

Then you remember how the second, awful Sex & The City movie — the one that should never have been made — was set in Qatar. Again, there was no link whatsoever between the place and the movie franchise, other than the feeling that Sex & The City was paid vastly to be there.

It’s not that I have anything against Qatar, per se — apart from its treatment of migrant workers — but it’s the blatant, heavyweight purchasing power that sticks in the throat. Like an oil-rich verucca salt, screaming for world attention — give me the World Cup, I don’t care if it’s 40 degrees and they all drop dead on the pitch, I want it. FIFA, you are shameless.