The Fyre festival of football?

A million football fans will be crammed into the same city deprived of their three staples: beer, TV and sex.

- Paul Catmur

The decision to disallow Chris Wood's goal in the qualifier against Costa Rica means that the All Whites and their fans will not be at the 2022 Football World Cup, which starts on November 20 in Qatar. They may have dodged a bullet.

There are, of course, worse places to hold the biggest sporting event in the world - for example, Stewart Island, Antarctica, or my spare bedroom. However, none of these quite have the trifecta of the inhospitable climate, lack of facilities and autocratic regime that Qatar has, though my back bedroom would run it close.

So, how did Fifa, the sport's governing body, end up choosing a tiny country in the Middle East without the football heritage, stadiums, climate, or accommodation to hold such a prestigious event? There are many rumours, not just of bribery but also that the then-French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, applied pressure for commercial reasons. Whatever the real story, Sepp Blatter, Fifa president at the time, now concedes that choosing Qatar was "a mistake".