Qatar’s winning bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010, ahead of Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, shocked the entire world.
Qatar is a tiny country in the Persian Gulf which had no football pedigree, no football infrastructure, insufficient transport and accommodation facilities, a dreadful human rights record, and where it is far too hot in the summer to play a World Cup.
Twelve years on, the bad news is that Qatar have proven to be even more unsuitable and shameful World Cup hosts than even their biggest critics anticipated, but the good news is that their $220 billion project has failed on its own terms before the World Cup has even begun – as HITC Sevens explores in this half hour documentary.