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Bids should be re-opened if World Cup shared - Iran coach

احدث اجدد واروع واجمل واشيك Bids should be re-opened if World Cup shared - Iran coach

Bids should be re-opened if World Cup shared - Iran coach
DOHA - If FIFA wants to share the 2022 World Cup around the Gulf States it should re-open the bidding process and invite the countries who failed to land the finals to bid again, Iran coach Afshin Ghotbi told Reuters on Thursday.

FIFA awarded the finals to Qatar last month ahead of rival bids from Australia, South Korea, Japan and the United States. In the final round of voting, Qatar triumphed 14-8 over the United States.

Ghotbi, an Iranian-American citizen and one of the most influential and respected coaches in Asia, said in an interview he was not in favour of comments made by UEFA president Michel Platini on Wednesday that the tournament could now be co-hosted.

"I think if they are now talking about sharing it with other countries, I think it is very unfair to the United States, to Australia, all the other countries that were bidding at the same time," he said in an interview during the Asian Cup.

"Now you are changing the landscape. My feeling is if they want to take a decision on that then they should go back to the bidding countries and ask them to bid again.

"Qatar has shown it can host it, so it should be here and it should be in the winter time -- that is a logical change, but it is not fair to talk about changing the venues at this stage."

Since awarding the finals to Qatar, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has said he now expected the finals to be staged in the winter, rather than the blistering hot Gulf summer months of June and July.

On Wednesday Platini, a member of the FIFA executive committee who awarded the finals, said it could be shared among other countries in the regions.

"The World Cup is Qatar's but I think maybe it could be the World Cup of the Gulf," he told reporters without naming any potential co-hosts.

Although Qatar bid to stage the World Cup on its own in 2022 in the summer, the Frenchman said he did not see any problem in making changes to the tournament once the decision had been made.

"When we held the World Cup in 1998, we made lots of changes to the original plan," he said.

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