Conservative Muslim country Qatar plans to bid for shock football World Cup bid

Qatar may have been kicked-out of the race to hold the 2016 summer Olympics, which left many  local Qataris fuming with rage and the large immigrant population's a sigh of relief, as more and construction will have gone under the hammer to make  way for new construction as it had happened during the Asian Games of 2006 and with its effect pushed the housing  rents, which the city has had been battling till now and the related spiraling inflation.

But the cash-rich Arabs having lost of the Olympic race are now turning their guns on the 2018 football world Cup which they seek to bid says a report  which  appeared in the Guardian newspaper on Sunday.

If Qatar gets the chance to hold the world cup it will be the first country to host the premier world footballing extrvanganza after it was the second country to host the Asian Games in 2006 with Iran being the first country to host the Asian games.

A Muslim conservative country with lost of restrictions on dress code and which has a permit system for availability of liquor for non-Muslims it remains to be seen how the country will open up to the merrymaking live style of the Brazilians and the binge-drinking Europeans not to forgot the hooligains from England.

That is a challenge which the Qataris must address themselves at home before venturing out to bid for the Cup and make a fool on the larger domain.

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Doha's controversial failure to make the short list for the 2016
Olympics has brought a bid from Qatar for the 2018 football World Cup
much closer, Observer Sport can reveal.

The gas- and oil-rich
state is keen to bring one of the world's major events to its tiny
peninsula which juts out into the Arabian Gulf, and after a snub by the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) at its meeting in Athens last
week, it will concentrate instead on challenging England, among others,
for the right to host football's flagship tournament.

Qatar had
been waiting to see the outcome of its Olympic bid before deciding to
formally state an intention to bid for the World Cup, but it is now
expected to announce its candidature within weeks. 'They are deadly
serious about bringing a major event to Qatar and after the Olympics,
the World Cup was always next on their list,' said an insider who is
close to the Emir.

However the Emir would want assurances that
Qatar would not be 'humiliated' in the way he believes it was by the
IOC, which refused to include Doha on the short-list despite its own
evaluation commission ranking the bid equal third on technical merit
with Chicago - the favourites to host the 2016 Olympics - and ahead of
Rio de Janeiro, which was put through to the next stage.

The
IOC president Jacques Rogge claimed it was because the October dates
chosen by Doha to stage the Games were outside its recommendations, but
many insiders believe it was because he feared the financial muscle
that Qatar could bring to the race.

It may seem inconceivable
that a country of only 4,416 square miles could stage a World Cup, but
Qatar is already making big plans to develop the infrastructure
necessary by building stadiums and hotels in Ras Laffan, Al-Khor,
Mesaieed and Dukhan, as well as Doha. An earlier plan of co-hosting the
event with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain has been shelved. Qatar
has already staged the 2006 Asian Games and is due to host the 2011
Asian Cup.

The UAE last month submitted a bid to Fifa to host
the Club World Cup in 2009 or 2010 and has talked openly of trying for
the 2018 World Cup.

'There is a lot of competition between Qatar
and the UAE to stage a major event first, and the Emir is determined
that Qatar should win,' said the insider. 'They will not give up until
they get something.'