Expect Amazing. As a writer, I was never a great fan of the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid slogan, on grounds of dodgy syntax.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see they were just one syllable away from a formulation that pretty well encapsulates what we have been going through since the Gulf state’s fourth-round December 2010 victory: Expect A Maze.
To summarise – with the third anniversary of Qatar’s moment of moments fast approaching, it is still perfectly unclear whether this small but fabulously wealthy, and increasingly influential, country will a) host the tournament in June and July 2022, as we thought had been decided, b) stage it at some other time, or c) highly unlikely – not put it on at all.
Fret ye not though: next week’s FIFA Executive Committee meeting in Zurich has “2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar: period of the competition” as item 25.2 on the agenda. Surely that will dispel all uncertainty.