I think when people calm down from the fact it was in Qatar, there will be some very interesting takeaways.
There's an increasing number of reports coming back that the very low level of alcohol made it a much more family, and women friendly environment. That's generally a good thing for your flagship event that represents football to the world (and as opposed to very drunk people openly doing cocaine in the streets and sticking flares up their arses before violently attacking stewards at Wembley last summer)
They gave out hundreds of thousands of tickets for the equivalent of £5-10 which allowed people from a class of people who could never afford any other world cup to go.
Having all the stadiums so close was really good for the teams and fans.
The temporary stadium is potentially a game changing invention, allowing countries to host without building permanent white elephants at great public cost.
As for the time of year, it's an incredibly Euro-centric thing to complain about. At least 50% of the world has to abandon their season for every other world cup - North and South America, Australia & NZ, Africa and even Scandinavia and eastern Europe.
Why not flip it around once in a generation and open up hosting to a ton of countries that could never do it in the summer?
Obviously Beckham is still a ****, but I think there's been some interesting lessons from the world cup being in Qatar