12 years have passed since FIFA President Sepp Blatter opened an envelope and presented to the whole world a small rectangular page on which was written “Qatar 2022”. A Middle Eastern country without any relevant infrastructure, which will host a World Cup – in football terms the event is like coming back from a 5-0 deficit in extra time, For victory. A sensation that cannot happen.
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That event became clear very quickly in the courts – 11 of those 22 FIFA members who were involved in the election were fined, convicted and permanently banned for corruption that led to that vote.
Very far from promises
But Qatar 2022, the World Cup tournament that was marked with a big stain even before it started, will eventually kick off at the beginning of the week at Al-Bayt Stadium in Doha. It will be a far cry from the model project promised by the Qataris in a 700-page book presented to FIFA officials in 2010: instead of the promised 12 stadiums, the World Cup will be held in only 8 stadiums – including one stadium that was made up of containers and will be dismantled immediately at the end of the tournament. Would show 8 stadiums? Who knows?
The close humanitarian supervision that was promised for the construction of the stadiums – collapsed. About 6,750 workers were killed in work accidents and due to poor living conditions, according to an investigation revealed by “The Guardian” at the end of 2021, an average of 12 workers killed every day. The investigation was based on official information from only 5 governments – India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – and does not include the victims from other countries such as Kenya and the Philippines, which sent many thousands of workers to Qatar and refused to disclose the mortality data.
And of course, the World Cup, which was promised to be played in accordance with tradition during the summer holidays so as not to disturb the usual annual blues of football – was moved when it became clear that Qatar could not be merged.
The representatives of the FIFA selection committee were presented with a presentation that promises how all stadiums will be air-conditioned to a freezing temperature, in a place where the average temperature in the summer is close to 40 degrees. In retrospect, it turned out that these promises were also in vain: in 2010, when Qatar promised the “project The greatest air conditioning in human history”, there was not even such a technology. In 2015, the Qataris admitted that it would not come to fruition – and FIFA announced that it was moving the tournament to the winter.
The problematic laws
Later, it became clear that there is a problem with issuing visas to fans, and that there is not enough hotel infrastructure for tourists. In light of this, the celebration will be split, with a large part of the fans not spending the night in Qatar at all, but sometime in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
In the months before the World Cup, it was decided to dock one cruise ship in the port of Doha, which will be used as a maritime hotel due to the lack of hotel rooms in the country. After a few weeks, it was decided to increase the number of marine hotels to three and two more huge ships were brought in (one of them with a capacity of 6,700 fans at the same time). Thousands of fans will change every two or three days and make room for other soccer fans who will come to see their team.
If all this is not enough, the laws of the country also create problems. LGBTQ people in Qatar are subject to constant persecution, with homosexuality being defined as a criminal offense and carrying a three-year prison sentence. This has led to protests around the world in the past year. In addition, in Qatar it is not possible to drink alcohol freely, so fans who come will have to be careful that they do so in the permitted places.
Protest in Germany against holding the World Cup in Qatar / Photo: Shutterstock
Does money buy everything?
How did Qatar manage to convince FIFA that it would meet the goals even though there was no chance? Mainly because everyone wanted to believe that money would buy everything. That an entire country could be merged, that stadiums could be lined with gold.
No one really asked how a million tourists will arrive in a place that does not have the infrastructure to house even half of them. “The vision you present is more important than the list of promises,” John Zarfa, an English strategic consultant hired by the Qataris to convince FIFA, later explained.
They believed that money could buy everything, and that FIFA could change world order and lead countries towards the mainstream. The approach designed to whitewash the choice in Qatar was, according to the same strategic consultant, that football belongs to everyone: “Why should the biggest football tournament be held only in Europe, North America, South America and a handful of countries in Asia? Is it fair that a region like the Middle East will never host the World Cup?”
And how do you defend the promises against what actually happened? “It’s very rare to keep any promise in the bidding process. If I think about the 2012 London Olympics, the original estimate for the budget was £3 billion. It ended up closer to £9 billion. Economics and politics have a habit of forcing a change in plans.” By the way, Qatar 2022 ended with a budget of 220 billion dollars – much higher than the most expensive World Cup in history, Russia 2018, which amounted to about 14 billion dollars.
Construction of Lusail Stadium in Doha. The stadium will host the first and last matches of the tournament / Photo: Shutterstock
Matt Miller, the former spokesman for the US Department of Justice, who was sent on behalf of the US to present the US bid to host the 2022 Games (a bid that was not won in the end), said in an interview that “the whole idea of the Qataris to hold a tournament in the desert, in the summer, in outdoor stadiums that will be cooled – was so fantastic I find it hard to believe that anyone ever bought it.”
FIFA could not be sorry
Was it all worth it? FIFA received too much money so that it could not really take it back. In preparation for its selection, Qatar entered very deeply into the field of sports, through sponsorship agreements in sums unseen at the time and through the purchase of sports teams.
The great Barcelona fell madly in front of the money, when for the first time in history they agreed to put a commercial sponsor on the shirt – Qatar Foundation, a body that was later revealed to transfer funds to terrorist organizations. Barcelona, which was at the height of its greatness at the time, helped whiten the Qataris, and of course – the Qataris’ historic purchase of Paris Saint-Germain and turning it into one of the biggest forces in football.
The world economy was then just after the financial crisis of 2008, and every new dollar was a blessing. Al-Jazeera completed the deployment of the cobwebs, with the purchase of sports broadcasting rights for exorbitant sums that succeeded in expropriating large and wealthy broadcasting franchisees. From then on, the Qataris’ path to the circle of decision-makers was short.
Still, a celebration. De Bruyne, Mbappe, Harry Kane, Vinicius, Messi and Ronaldo. The opening whistle will make you forget everything. The workers who died, the promises that didn’t come true, the corruption. For a month only football will be important.
And when FIFA finishes the Qatar chapter, it will prepare for the next chapter – an expanded World Cup of 48 teams that will be spread over three countries for the first time in history: the USA, Mexico and Canada.