Morgan Freeman may play the voice of God and Bill Clinton may have rescued American reporters from North Korea... but they couldn't help the United States Soccer Federation's bid committee land the World Cup in 2022. FIFA just announced that the 2018 World Cup will be in Russia and the 2022 World Cup will be in Qatar. The U.S. bid committee was aiming to submit bids for both, but then withdrew from the 2018 process in October to focus on the 2022 bid.
This will be the first time a World Cup has been held in the Middle East. The chairman of the Qatar bid committee, Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani, said, "We are offering FIFA a historic opportunity to expand the frontiers of the World Cup. This involves a new mission, a new adventure," and also said that the country could spend $50 billion on transportation and "$4 billion on new and upgraded venues, including air-conditions to cool fans and players in stadiums," according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Former president Clinton had said of the U.S. bid's strength, "It's important that all the teams who come to any World Cup venue feel that they, too, are playing at home, not just for people watching on television. Maybe America's best claim to this World Cup is that we have the only nation you can put the World Cup that can guarantee no matter who makes the final, we can fill a stadium with home-nation rooters." However, a writer from the Telegraph found that Bubba was dry, reading off script, and noted that Freeman stumbled during his speech.
Still, Russia managed to win the 2018 World Cup even though President Vladimir Putin snubbed the vote, calling the bidding process unfair, "I would like to note that recently we have watched with disappointment as an obvious campaign was being unleashed against members of the FIFA executive committee... They are being dragged through the mud and compromised. I interpret this as unfair competition. We believe that such methods of competition are entirely unacceptable. Under these circumstances, I think it would be best not to go out of respect for the members of the FIFA executive committee, so that they could make their decision in peace and without any outside pressure." This really helps fit in with his WikiLeaked image.
