Paul Rouse: If Platini is right, England might just win 2022 World Cup

An extraordinary set of circumstances have combined to make England heavy favourites to win the 2022 soccer World Cup, writes Paul Rouse.

Firstly, Fifa decided to award the staging of the World Cup to Qatar, a small Arab country with a population of fewer than 2 million people. This was a surprise — not least because Qatar had never even qualified to play in the finals throughout their history.

There were powerful reasons to choose Qatar — it holds the world’s third largest natural gas reserves and oil reserves and its income per capita is among the highest in the world.