Why Qatar Should Not Host the 2022 World Cup
The best teams and most iconic players in the footballing world will take the field next fall. The FIFA Football World Cup, whose 2018 final was watched by over a billion people. The location is usually in a place that is reasonable.
The 2010 edition was in South Africa, where football is blossoming. The 2014 edition was held in Brazil, which is one of the most iconic nations to play the sport, and home of the four-time world champions. The most unusual of the decade was the 2018 edition in Russia, though there were many plausible reasons for their successful bid, ranging from European proximity to a good national team.
The 2022 edition is much different from the 21 tournaments before it, due to its historic Arab host, Qatar.
Qatar, who won the bid in 2010, over many countries, such as South Korea and the United States, was a very unlikely state to host the 2022 World Cup.
They have a population of 2 million, which is six times smaller than the capital of the last host country. They don’t have a great national team, and have never made the World Cup in its 91 year old history.
There are so many reasons why Qatar shouldn’t hold the World Cup, in addition to the reasons that without its luck, it couldn’t.
Qatar, as stated before, is a country that doesn’t resemble the normal World Cup host nation.
Its national team has never made the tournament, nor does it have a good domestic league. The top flight of Qatari football is the Qatar Stars League, which has 12 teams, though only one team dominates, essentially making it a farmer’s league.
Though soccer is a popular sport in the country, the level of football talent and development pales in comparison to even Russia’s domestic league, the Russian Premier League. Even if the enthusiasm for the sport is colossal in the Arab state, the number of people playing the sport is limited by the country’s population. Mathematically, if 75% of the population, regardless of age or gender ( cannot happen due to Qatar’s very patriarchal society ), it would only be as much as how many play in Russia, and would be crushed by the numbers in Europe or Brazil/South America.
The Super League, which was a short-lived league composed of the best teams in Europe in an NBA/NFL type model ( the best teams only play each other ), took away the equality that the sport represented for so long. Teams that were in danger of relegation or in leagues unbeknownst to a regular fan had a chance to play globally popular teams, which gave them a chance at some fame and attention. UEFA, the governing football federation of European football, denounced the idea and threatened the clubs and players with repercussions. Even FIFA, the global administrative body, wasn’t silent.
However, looking at the Qatar bid, the promises of equality were broken. Firstly, though ticket sales and other World Cup related sales go directly to FIFA, local economies where games are played benefit due to tourism and the multiplier effect, which is an exponentially increasing economic phenomenon similar to a chain reaction.
Millions, if not billions of dollars can help the host nation. Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world when proportional to its size. If it was a much larger country, then it would be among the world’s economic giants. Its economy needs no help. Instead of giving the bid to a country that could use the money such as more developed countries in Africa or in Asia, or even in North America, FIFA gave the bid to a Middle Eastern nation which doesn’t represent many of the values it supports.
In 2010, when the host of the tournament was announced, there was anger, there was resentment, and there was corruption. Still to this day, people argue that Qatar doesn’t deserve to play host to the 32 best football teams in the world, and there’s good reason for that. Before explaining how the corruption occurred, the bidding system which possibly let it happen needs to be explained.
The way that FIFA chooses a host is through voting by the FIFA Executive Committee, also known as the FIFA council. The council is made up of 37 members elected by the FIFA Congress. Each member gets a vote on who they think should host. The result is similar to the Iowa Caucus, a part of the U.S election primaries, where people vote on candidates, and the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated. The process continues until one person is chosen by the majority.
Qatar didn’t have the same benefits that its competitors had ( USA, South Korea, Japan, etc. ). If delegates from each country that participated in the tournament voted on the host, it certainly wouldn’t be Qatar. The U.S Department of Justice substantiated the claims that officials from the Qatar National Football Federation bribed 3 South American officials to vote in favor of them, for any South American country was ineligible to be host due to FIFA hosting rules. Even if the claims of corruption were blown out of proportion, the idea of a country that is involved in such a scandal on the global stage is embarrassing for the sport, and therefore too unethical to be host of the biggest sporting event in the world.
Looking at Qatar’s competitors : USA, Japan, South Korea, Australia, they all have the infrastructure and the funds to build an atmosphere that is positive for football. In all their countries, they have stadiums where teams can play. Qatar didn’t, and their ability to host relied on a contingency where they would build 7 new stadiums which could accommodate the number of fans and the number of matches being played over the course of the tournament.
Qatar didn’t and still doesn’t have a great domestic league, nor does it have the infrastructure for the sport. When the World Cup is over, many of the stadiums will be torn down or down-sized for use of other recreation, showing that to Qatar, the chance to host isn’t a privilege, it’s more an opportunity to make money.
The economics and politics of the situation have been covered, but the societal consequences of the bid are even more egregious, and absolutely unmistakable and irrevocable. Qatar, an oil country, relies on the help of guest workers ( workers from another country ) to help run their economy. Foreign workers constitute 88% of their population, which means almost every 9 in 10 people are not native to Qatar.
To build the stadiums, the government employed thousands of guest workers, starting in 2010, for construction. Many Middle Eastern countries break numerous human rights violations, and Qatar is no different. Humanitarian organizations had cited many cases of abuse of workers and terrible living conditions for those who toil in the construction sites. The Kafala system, which allows workers to leave their job without approval from their employer, has caused many problems regarding World Cup related activity.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org),
“The lack of regulations and protections for migrant workers’ rights often results in low wages, poor working conditions, and employee abuse. Racial discrimination and gender-based violence are endemic. Global anti-racism protests, the coronavirus pandemic, and preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar have exposed the kafala system’s flaws.”
Countless organizations and groups have called for FIFA to act, but the headquarters in Brussels has remained relatively quiet.
FIFA put their chips on the wrong country at the wrong time. There are so many reasons why Qatar should not host. It may make history as the first Arab nation to host the World Cup, but the way it got there is so much darker than it appears.
