The down­fall of Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam has put Qatar's sur­prise suc­cess in bid­ding to host the 2022 World Cup un­der fresh scruti­ny.FI­FA on Sat­ur­day banned bin Ham­mam for life from foot­ball for his role in a bribery scan­dal, mak­ing the Asian foot­ball pres­i­dent the most se­nior of­fi­cial con­vict­ed of cor­rup­tion in the gov­ern­ing body's 107-year his­to­ry.The link be­tween the fall from grace of bin Ham­mam, Qatar's foot­ball power­bro­ker, and the 2022 World Cup may come nat­u­ral­ly for Qatar's crit­ics.

But the prospect of deal­ing with two con­tro­ver­sies is a daunt­ing one for Qatar and the whole of the Gulf re­gion where sport has been el­e­vat­ed to some­thing akin to a na­tion­al cause.Qatar's emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khal­i­fa Al Thani, and his fel­low rulers around the Gulf toast­ed Qatar's World Cup win as a "source of pride" for the en­tire Mus­lim world.Rulers of the re­gion's oil-rich states com­pete for van­i­ty projects. Dubai boasts the world's tallest sky­scraper, while Abu Dhabi has a New York Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus and will soon be home to Lou­vre and Guggen­heim art mu­se­ums.

The com­pe­ti­tion be­tween the Gulf's deep-pock­et­ed sheiks has been par­tic­u­lar­ly fierce in sports with one oil-rich sheik­dom try­ing to out­do the oth­er in host­ing a ten­nis or a golf tour­na­ment and lur­ing A-list ath­letes to their desert fief­doms.The World Cup is by far the biggest prize yet award­ed to the Gulf. It is, how­ev­er, in dan­ger of be­ing com­pro­mised.

The FI­FA scan­dal un­fold­ed just months af­ter the 62-year-old bin Ham­mam helped se­cure for his tiny, but im­mense­ly rich coun­try the world's biggest sport­ing event af­ter the Olympics."The fact that he was a key fig­ure in the bid could rub off on Qatar's World Cup for sure," said James Dorsey, a se­nior re­search fel­low of the Na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Sin­ga­pore's Mid­dle East In­sti­tute and au­thor of the blog, The Tur­bu­lent World of Mid­dle East Soc­cer.Man­ag­ing bin Ham­mam's quest to clear his name and wag­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al cam­paign to prove the crit­ics of Qatar 2022 wrong is a daunt­ing task for any Gulf ruler, un­ac­cus­tomed to be­ing held ac­count­able by any­body.

"It's a tall or­der, let's face it," Dorsey said.The ruler's dilem­ma: save a dis­graced foot­ball of­fi­cial who helped win Qatar the World Cup or de­fend the World Cup from crit­ics who claim his coun­try was a poor choice to host the 2022 event.A lengthy le­gal fight by bin Ham­mam will not help di­vorce the bribery scan­dal from the World Cup, even though the Qatar bid has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing.