Irony in FIFA's home town

Walking through Zurich's Old Town this Saturday, I came across a crowd of people, some kicking soccer balls, some drinking beers, some wearing blue and white jerseys, some with blue and white scarves. It looked interesting enough, so I wandered over and asked someone, "Sprechen sie Englisch?" "No," he replied. I found someone else who replied with some pause, "No -- but he does," and proceeded to learn what was going on from his friend.

It turned out that a group of Grasshopper Club Zurich soccer fans had assembled to rally for a new stadium a few hours before that evening's home match. Their club, the oldest in Zurich and most successful in Swiss soccer history, has been sharing the 25,000-capacity stadium -- about the size of one-year-old Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ -- of their local archrivals, FC Zurich, for the past four seasons. A new stadium was planned at the site of the old stadium when it was demolished, but it appears the project has stalled. Clearly, Grasshopper CZ fans are not happy about this and were voicing their displeasure before marching 30 minutes to see their favorite team play.

It's ironic that, four months after Zurich-based FIFA awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments to oil-rich Russia and Qatar, the two most popular soccer clubs in its own back yard appear in an uncomfortable stadium sharing situation. Russia has 13 stadiums to build or reconstruct in order to host the World Cup in seven years, and Qatar has to build 12 stadiums from scratch in order to host the World Cup four years later.

Quatar was controversially awarded the World Cup with a bid that promised, among other far-fetched ideas, to dismantle and reassemble its World Cup stadiums in other parts of the world needing them. Did the Qatar World Cup bid organizers have Zurich, not exactly an underdeveloped part of the world, in mind? Surely not. But the irony shouldn't be lost on FIFA's executives. That's assuming, of course, that FIFA's leadership even knows what's going on in their home town -- probably as far-fetched an idea as Qatar's to air condition all their new (outdoor) stadiums (if not the entire country) and then give them away!