Warm welcome Mohamed Bin Hammam, President of Asian Football Confederation (AFC), receives FIFA President Sepp Blatter (R) upon his arrival at Doha airport Thursday. (Reuters) ABU DHABI: Qatar will stage the 2022 World Cup Finals alone without seeking help from neighboring countries, the president of the United Arab Emirates Football Association Mohamed Khalfan Al-Rumaithi said Thursday. “Nobody came out from Qatar and said ‘would you do that?' We are happy for Qatar, they delivered the goods. I think they will go solo,” Al-Rumaithi told Reuters. FIFA President Sepp Blatter said recently that Qatar, a minor soccer nation who were awarded the 2022 Finals earlier this month, might hold some matches to other countries in the Gulf. Speaking at a news conference at the Club World Cup, Al-Rumaithi had minutes earlier said: “We have not been approached. “Qatar won a fair competition and today I read in the news that Mr. Blatter said only the Qataris can decide if they want the region to participate in this. “We know that at that moment when Mr. Blatter opened the envelope ( during the Zurich vote) it was only Qatar. “They are our neighbors, they are our brothers ... Let's believe in Qatar.” Winter World Cup FIFA's top officials also left open the option of rescheduling the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to avoid the blistering summer, but noted Thursday that any decision would require extensive talks with football federations and other overseers of the sport. In separate remarks, Blatter and general secretary Jerome Valcke said moving the Qatar matches to winter deserves study as a way to better protect players and show flexibility for future bid cities. “FIFA's job is to have a World Cup that protects the players so we take note of the recommendations and go through the list of requirements,” Blatter told journalists in Qatar in his first visit since the tiny Gulf nation was awarded the World Cup earlier this month. “We will look into this and make the right decision.” Valcke, attending the Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi, said that switching the schedule would make it possible for a wider range of countries to bid for the World Cup - which traditionally takes places in June and July - in the future. “Why not? It means you open the World Cup to countries where they can never play it in June and July because it's never the right period of time,” Valcke told the Associated Press. “If you can do so, it would be a solution to open the organization of the World Cup to a number of countries in this period which is winter in Europe but not winter in the rest of the world.” Still, he said it is “not so easy” to stage a winter World Cup since it would require changing the international calendar - including possibly the year before and after the 2022 tournament - and getting the support of domestic leagues and national federations. “You can't just make a decision to move the tournament and that is it,” he said.
