On a Qatari World Cup

My aunt shared this opinion piece from the New York Times with me this morning and I started to reply to her, but I thought maybe it might be worth including in my little World Cup series.

This opinion piece, like a lot of what we see from the Times these days, makes some very good points, but it leaves out some equally important points as well. So I wanted to take a moment to address it.

In support of a World Cup in the Middle East

Football is truly the world’s sport. There is no other team sport that is played so widely, at so many levels. The history of football is tied to the recent history of the world, to many of our major geopolitical issues and conflicts. It is a mirror of us, as humans. It reflects back the good and the bad in society, in how we interact. And included in that reflection is the Eurocentric model of recent history. In the history of football, we can also read the history of colonization, patriarchy, racism, economic system, war, and much more.

The World Cup is likewise an effective mirror of the evolution of football and society. It’s called the World Cup, but in practice it is only slightly less exclusionary than the MLB “World” Series. As referenced in an earlier edition of this series, the qualifiers tend to be from richer countries, and as I’ll be delving into in a future edition, the winners of the previous 21 Cups have been exclusively from the European confederation (UEFA) or the South American one (CONMEBOL).

As far as hosting breaks down, UEFA countries have hosted 11 World Cups, CONMEBOL has hosted 5, CONCACAF (the North American confederation) has hosted 4, CAF (Africa’s confederation) and AFC (Asia’s confederation) have hosted one apiece, and OFC (Oceania’s confederation) has not hosted any. The Middle East is already disadvantaged in that it doesn’t have a confederation of its own, but instead countries considered to make up the Middle East are divided between CAF, UEFA, and AFC. Qatar is a member of the AFC, in the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF), which represents the bulk of the Middle East.

Without parroting what the opinion piece in question already says, football is just as incorporated in recent Middle East history as it is in most other parts of the world. And in that, the Middle East deserves to host the World Cup just as much as any other region. And more than some.¹

Against a Qatari World Cup

It’s worth noting that the NYT piece was originally published with the title “Why Qatar Deserves to Host the World Cup, Actually” which was later changed to “Why the World Cup Belongs in the Middle East.” This change alone is doing a lot of work, and revealing a lot of the issue at hand. Yes, the Middle East does deserve to host a Cup. I actually have not seen a single opinion in opposition to that.² The issue at hand is not the Middle East, it is Qatar, and specifically how this has all gone down.

I don’t want to go too deep, because hundreds of thousands of words have already been written on the subject, literal books have been published, but in short: this never should have happened. But here’s a summary.

Corruption

The allegations of bribery and corruption within FIFA in the 2010s, including “vote buying” by the Qatari bid committee, are well-documented. Nothing has been officially proven, as far as I’m aware, but honestly, it’s gone back and forth a few times and I’ve lost track of where we stand today. I know for sure that Sepp Blatter, the Swiss President of FIFA from 1998 to 2015, was banned from FIFA for 12 years due to corruption. Multiple whistle-blowers have come forward regarding the Qatari bid, but all have mysteriously recanted their allegations despite evidence to the contrary. I’m not saying all signs point to yes, I’m just saying that even the Russian hosting bid for 2016 didn’t have this many problems.

Human Rights Violations

I actually debated splitting this subheading to specify which of the human rights violations, because there are that many different issues at hand. But even if you put aside the LGBT+ violations, like we are so wont to do these days, the problems are plentiful.

We started seeing verified reports of human rights violations as early as 2013, when The Guardian broke a story about the terrible working conditions of migrant workers building the facilities for the Cup. I have rewritten this paragraph 5 times trying to figure out how to succinctly summarize all the issues without writing a book about it, and failed, so bulletpoints it is:

• Migrant workers were not paid, and their passports were stolen, unless they signed false statements that they had received their wages.
• The best possible situation for migrant workers was indentured servitude, but more were victims of slavery and human trafficking.
• Working and living conditions were abysmal. Unsanitary, unsafe, and brutal.
• Countless workers died, with their deaths being covered up more often than not. The best guess of the death toll is over 6,500 workers since work began on the facilities

Football culture

Despite the arguments made in the Times piece, Qatar’s football culture is lacking to say the least. I mean, even the US has a better football culture. At the time of being awarded the tournament in 2010, Qatar was ranked 113 in the world, and had never qualified for the World Cup before. It could be argued that the Qatari national team, well, isn’t. The Qatar Football Association has previously naturalized players from foreign nations for its own team and offered incentives to uncapped players of other nations to switch allegiances.

In 2020, Qatar began a “fan engagement program” through which they would pay air travel, tickets, housing and even spending money for fans who are handpicked by the Qatari government. They would be required to sing and chant as directed and report any social media posts critical of Qatar.

Alcohol

As someone who has been sober most of my adult life, I don’t really associate football with drinking, but many do. Which raised some questions when the Cup was awarded to a country with very strict alcohol prohibition laws. Qatar hasn’t lightened the laws themselves, and clarified just this week that alcoholic beverages will not be for sale within the eight stadiums. They are instead offering special areas where fans can get drunk and/or sober up.

No word has been offered on what happens when a drunk fan forgets where they are and wanders out of said zones. Or becomes belligerent. But of course, no football fan has ever become drunk, confused, or belligerent before.

LGBT Rights

I’m a little too tired to go deep into this one. In part because all of the press is focused on gay cis men, and not the rest of the community, but whatever. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, with offenders facing fines and up to seven years imprisonment. Good ‘ol Sepp Blatter initially said: “I would say they should refrain from any sexual activities” when asked if gay fans would be allowed in Qatar for the Cup, which is great.

Boycotting

I know a lot of people are supporting boycotting the World Cup. And maybe I should. But everything sucks these days, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, and I really love watching football.

I would encourage you to boycott, if you don’t care about watching football. That said, knowing that the bulk of my readers are US-based, there’s also the fact that low viewership in the US could have other ramifications. It is possible that it won’t be attributed to the Qatari boycotts, but will instead be used as further evidence that US residents don’t care about football and the sport should continue to be relegated to weird, hidden ESPN channels, so we can watch more of the CTE-Football or baseball, where they just tweaked the manufacturing of the little, hard ball in such a way that more players were hit by pitches than any other year on record.

I am generally frustrated by Qatar hosting because it has created this situation: we have known, for literally a decade, that there were issues here. FIFA did nothing, FIFA members did nothing. Now, the media is framing it as if it’s on the players and the fans to boycott, to send a message, to make things right. Which, in the end, may not accomplish much, because what’s done is done. Qatar and FIFA can apologize all the way to the bank.

1: I am excited that CONCACAF will host the 2026 Cup, and I hope to attend a match if I can swing it, but it does feel like a waste, bringing the Cup to the one part of the world that has never really embraced football.

2: I’m not saying these opinions don’t exist, but the football journalism and fans I follow haven’t shared them