SEPP Blatter happened upon a genius ruse this week.

Snub half of Europe's great footballing nations by giving the 2018 World Cup to Russia, he reasoned, and people will be too stunned to realise what is going on with the 2022 tournament.

But, despite the recriminations surrounding the dismal failure of England's bid; football fans should be aware that Qatar is an issue that will affect us all for many decades to come.

The Qatar bid seems to have stroked the egos (and who knows what else) of FIFA's Organising Committee by essentially offering them the power to build a new nation where none existed before.

At present, Qatar is merely a sandpit half the size of Wales where 1.5m people dig for the increasingly scarce commodity of black gold.

When the oil goes, so does the country: unless, of course, it can reinvent itself as a tourist destination. Hmm, how to do that?

Having won the right to stage the World Cup, cheap third world battery labour will now be drafted in to erect a dozen stadia, install a completely new mass transit system, and create hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms where only desert existed before.

Such migrant labour is likely to be exploited and abused in a tiny state where 20,000 workers flee their jobs each year because of dreadful conditions or non-payment of wages (source: Amnesty International).

FIFA is overseeing the laying of crazy-paving in a barren wilderness, and the creation of a white elephant to plug the financial hole left by dwindling oil stocks.

But Blatter's Folly cannot simply be laid to waste once the hundred-degree heat of the summer of 2022 has passed. Oh no.

For generations, football fans are going to have to put up with international friendlies, pre-season tournaments and, who knows, a whole Premier League weekend's worth of fixtures outsourced to the 2022 theme park.

All of this, meanwhile, gives legitimacy to a tinpot state with a dreadful record in human rights: where 18th Century attitudes to women's rights are enshrined in law; and where gay fans (or players) attending the tournament may be punished with 90 lashes (effectively a death sentence). Have a drink in the wrong place while out there, and you could end up imprisoned without charge for six months, and without trial for two years.

Sports administrators like to boast that an event such as the World Cup can bring about change for good in dissident nations. Progress in China has accelerated to almost glacial speed since it hosted the 2008 Olympics. And, my, how the 1936 games sorted out things for Germany.

In the run-up to FIFA's decision, one or two name journalists from British papers wrote pieces heralding Qatar's bid as both revolutionary and great for football. It's quite amazing what an all expenses-paid free luxury trip to the Middle East can buy.

The simple fact is that there is nothing good that will come out of Blatter's oily bestowing of the 2022 tournament; and that this decision merely reinforces the fact FIFA are the very last people who should be running football.