The Issue with Qatar Hosting the World Cup
***CONTENT WARNING: mentions of rape
On Sunday, November 20th, the FIFA World Cup officially began at Al Bayt Stadium, Qatar, with its first match between Qatar and Ecuador. With more than 111 million viewers globally across its 195 minute broadcast time, to say the event is popular would be an understatement.
However, despite the glorious reputation of the World Cup, accusations against the location of the 2022 World Cup have spiraled into viral and controversial stories. Many are criticizing FIFA for its decision to hold the cup in Qatar—despite the decision being made in 2010.
As a country located in Western Asia, Qatar has one of the world's largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Its government is a constitutional monarchy, led by Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who exercises full executive power. The 2005 constitution provides for hereditary rule by the emir's male branch of the al-Thani family.
In Qatar, homosexuality is essentially criminalized by their penal code; such laws have led to the prosecution of rape victims and can lead to a prison sentence of up to 7 years. Qatar’s lack of infrastructure before their selection as host also meant they had to turn to their huge migrant worker population to construct their stadiums and hotels. However, worker conditions were exploitative and dangerous. An investigation done by The Guardian, a British daily newspaper founded in 1821, stated that at least 6,500 workers had died in Qatar since its hosting status was announced. "Some of [the deaths] include workers who collapsed on the stadium construction site and died,” said Pete Pattison, a reporter from the investigation..
In fact, while the competition’s opening ceremony was broadcasted through an online stream, BBC’s main channel featured a discussion on the human and environmental costs of the World Cup featuring presenter Gary Lineker, and panelists Alan Shearer, Alex Scott, and Ashley Williams. All of them spoke critically about the issues surrounding LGBTQ+ equality and other human right violations in the Middle Eastern country. .
Qatar’s officials paid more than $3 million to FIFA officials as bribes to allow them to gain the bids needed to host the cup; although the implications were sorted out later in time—and the bribed FIFA officials were stripped of their titles—"there have been just so many allegations of corruption against the Qatari bid," said journalist James Montague in an interview with NPR's Throughline, and it is still unclear whether Qatar was selected from bribes.
Fans are also skeptical of Qatar’s ability to host weather wise: Qatar’s intense summer heat makes the traditional summertime World Cup impossible, so the event was instead pushed back to November. But this shift in timing causes major disruptions to professional soccer—especially in Europe, where most league schedules typically run from late summer through the following spring.
The tight schedule has caused "unprecedented workload demands" on players, said a report by FIFPRO, the union that represents 65,000 soccer players worldwide. In fact, the usual average of 31 to 37 days given for athletes to recover and prepare for each game has been reduced to a mere seven or eight days this year, the union reports.
"Overlapping competitions, consecutive back-to-back matches, extreme weather conditions, a condensed preparation period and insufficient recovery time together pose an ominous danger to player health and performance" the report says; athletes participating in the cup will face "a really high risk" of injury, said FIFPRO consultant and exercise scientist Darren Burgess.
Overall, the decision to host the World Cup in Qatar was not a good one; it was a “blatant mistake,” said former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, and I would have to agree. Such “mistakes” that not only undermine those suffering under the human rights violations, but also harm athletes who have trained years for the high stake competition, should never occur again.
by ANGELA TANG