The above headline was the hottest football related topic in the past few days as FIFA once again did not fail to stir up controversy. First the world's governing body changed Qatar's 2022 World Cup from the traditional summer time to winter. For the same hot reason, FIFA has now stripped Qatar of holding the 2021 Confederations Cup. Ever since it was announced that Qatar will be hosting the 2022 World Cup and questions about the safety of the players have been asked as many as you can count. The weather in Qatar in the summer is known to be extremely hot to an unbearable extent. A lot of football experts, pundits, coaches and players worldwide already requested that the World Cup should either be taken away from Qatar or at least shift its timing to the winter which means disrupting the local seasons everywhere which makes the idea somewhat hard to apply. However, after Qatar won the race to host the World Cup the idea of prying it from them and giving it to another country was simply impossible and more difficult than shifting it to the winter after Qatar spent and is still spending billions, not millions, on preparations. The FIFA committee went through many discussions and decided that the only way out was shifting the tournament to winter somewhere between November and December instead of June and July as the temperature will be around 25C instead of over 50C in June and July. The idea might look undoable and hard to even think about since the local leagues start in August and September worldwide, but FIFA announced that this was the only realistic option before them. Many teams expressed their anger at the decision as this means injuries and fatigue to their players who simply won't be able to perform at the highest fitness levels after the World Cup. These clubs even asked for compensation in case their players get injured or are harmed in some way because of the World Cup but FIFA refused to even discuss the matter of compensation, saying it was unthinkable to talk about it since all teams worldwide will endure the same fate which means a fair chance to all teams in their local leagues, in addition to having over seven years to get ready and reorganise the schedules of the leagues. The FIFA Confederations Cup is an international football tournament for national teams, currently held every four years. It is contested by the holders of each of the six FIFA continental champions, along with the World Cup holder and the host nation, to bring the number of teams up to eight. Traditionally, the Confederations Cup which takes place a year before the World Cup, is seen as the final and biggest rehearsal for the World Cup, so the decision to remove it from Qatar and give it to another Asian country is surely one that will raise many questions. FIFA's statement said that rather than having two local seasons of distraction and disruption, they decided to give the Confederations Cup to another Asian country. The decision didn't go down well with Qatar but they couldn't do anything about it because they know it is the best possible option. India and Australia are the early front-runners to become the new hosts. FIFA confirmed they expect to make a decision regarding the new hosts by the summer. The next edition of the Confederations Cup will be in Russia in 2017 as a prelude to the 2018 World Cup. The Brazilian national team will be defending their title in Russia as they won the last three editions of the tournament.
