"The technical report indicated clearly that it was too hot in summer, but despite that the executive committee decided with quite a big majority that the tournament would be in Qatar."
A decision on whether the tournament will be moved from the steaming summer months to the winter months in eight years' time has been postponed by FIFA until after next year's World Cup finals in Brazil.
There have also been numerous corruption allegations about the bidding process for the tournament and reports of alleged abuses of the rights of migrant workers employed on World Cup projects.
A report in the Daily Mirror in March claimed that over a thousand people have died in Qatar during their £39 billion building spree for the 2022 World Cup.
Qatar can boast of the highest GDP per capita in the world - $106,000 (£68,000) in 2012, according to the International Monetary Fund. But this figure doesn’t reflect the huge disparity between the incomes of Qatari nationals and the non-national transients who make the overwhelming majority of the population, and whose lot is a sorry one," wrote Auclair.
The recruitment process itself is highly suspect, relying on a system of sponsorship via placement agencies which is widely abused; passports may be confiscated on arrival; and, once in situ, those immigrants are routinely denied basic rights granted to workers in most parts of the world. They are de facto non-citizens. Football has, so far, chosen to ignore this.
According to all independent reports, those migrant workers toil six days a week (no summer break for them), 10 hours a day, for less than $10 (£6.40) a shift. They are crammed in rudimentary camps mostly devoid of decent sanitation and – not a luxury in Qatar – air conditioning.
Though official statistics are not available, credible evidence has emerged to suggest a staggering death rate among the young, fit men who come to work there."
In March, Qatar's 2022 World Cup organising committee were forced to come out and deny being aware of any alleged payments by the disgraced former head of the country's football association to an ex-vice president of FIFA.
Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that a company under the control of Mohamed Bin Hammam paid $1.2 million to Jack Warner, the former president of North American football's governing body CONCACAF and a member of the FIFA committee which chose the 2022 World Cup hosts.
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