A FIFA inspection team arrived in Qatar Tuesday to tour facilities for the country's 2022 World Cup bid, including a specially designed stadium that promises to keep fans and players cool in the searing summer heat. The FIFA inspection team will stay through Thursday and includes six delegates, led by Chilean Football Federation president Harold Mayne-Nicholls. Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the organizing committee for the recently concluded World Cup in South Africa, is also part of the delegation. Qatar is the final stop on tour of the nine countries which are bidding to host the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments. FIFA will announce the winners on Dec. 2. H.E. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, chairman of the Qatar 2022 Bid, called the visit “an important milestone in the journey of our bid and a seminal moment in the sport of football throughout the region. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to present our bid, in all its detail and ambition, to football's governing body,” he said in a statement. Inspectors were expected to tour the solar-powered stadium for five-a-side football which is supposed to keep temperatures at 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees F) on the field and in the stands, far cooler than the 41 C (106 F) average in June, July and August. They will also attend a local football match later in the evening in a traditional stadium. The solar-powered system is designed to continuously pump cool air into the venues, and Qatar bid committee CEO Hassan Al-Thawadi has said the technology can be expanded in the coming years to ensure that fan zones and training sites are also kept cool. Most analysts consider Qatar the longshot in a group of bidders containing the United States, Australia, South Korea and Japan, which all have hosted either a World Cup or an Olympics in the past. It will show inspectors a $4 billion plan to build nine stadiums and renovate three others, all with the new cooling system, as well as some of the $42.9 billion in infrastructure upgrades that it plans regardless of whether it wins the bid. It also plans to make the case that a Qatar World Cup would make history, since it would be the first time that a Middle East nation has hosted the prestigious tournament.
