The news of the international sports movement experienced little respite and downtime during 2013. Elections, candidacies, events, controversies... FrancsJeux sorted out a particularly large lot. And pulled out of the hat the top 10 men, women or institutions who made 2013 for us.
No. 8: Qatar
His year FrancsJeux – Nine years after organizing the Football World Cup, the Gulf state has often made the news, but would have done without it. There is not a month in 2013 without a controversy over the date of the 2022 World Cup. At the height of the debate, Sepp Blatter came to admit half-heartedly that the attribution of the event to Qatar was the result of “certain pressures. » More serious: the emirate is the subject of violent criticism, relayed in the press around the world, on the working conditions of workers on the construction sites of the future World Cup. Trade union organizations even speak of a situation of slavery. But in Doha, we are moving forward without slowing down. At the end of the year, the Qatari Olympic Committee even took advantage of an AIPS congress to announce its ambition to host annually, by 2030, at least 50 world sporting events.
What awaits him in 2014 – The next twelve months will be those of the operational phase in the vast 2022 World Cup project. Work on the Al Wakrah stadium, located around twenty kilometers from Doha, will begin within a few weeks. It will be the first of the system to be officially under construction. Five others are in the final stages of the design process. For its part, FIFA should announce at the end of the year, probably in December, the final date for the 2022 World Cup, following a vast consultation launched last October with federations, teams, players, but also partners and broadcasters. The path to a World Cup in November/December seems the strongest today. The only near certainty: the event will not be brought forward to the months of January and February, reserved for the Winter Olympic Games. The IOC would have difficulty accepting such a decision, especially from one of its members, Sepp Blatter.
