The cross : Gianni Infantino, president of Fifa, considered that this World Cup was the “best of all time”. Has Qatar succeeded in its influence operation worth more than 200 billion euros?
Lukas Aubin : The president of Fifa had said the same thing for the Football World Cup in Russia in 2018. Obviously, it is a communication stunt to say that, despite the controversies, everything worked like clockwork. For Qatar, it is both a success and a failure. Its image has improved on a global scale: whether in Latin America, Africa or Asia, it has taken a place that it did not have before. Qatar now exists on the world map. Nevertheless, this success is to be minimized in the Western world.
The boycott or protest initiatives from Europe did not really disrupt the World Cup or TV audiences. And the rest of the world did not follow. How to interpret it?
L. A. : This shows that the West is no longer the main world opinion leader, as it could have been during the 20th century. We are today in a multipolar world where many powers can have a storefront, have an influence, disseminate an opinion, values.
In the 1980s, very important boycotts took place. One can think of the boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, where fifty countries had sent neither delegation nor flag to the Soviet Union. (after the invasion of Afghanistan, editor’s note). Today, such a boycott is impossible. Sport has taken on too much importance on an international scale, football in particular, so much so that it is impossible to do without it.
Have European countries overestimated their power to influence the organizers of the World Cup?
L. A. : The rights of LGBT people, protected and defended in Western countries, are not in many countries, especially in Qatar. And this message had little impact, both with the supporters, the populations who moved but also with the players, with for example the France team which refused to wear this armband.
Similarly, the question of the rights of foreign workers in Qatar has not been approached in the same way either in the West or outside it. To my knowledge, there has been no human rights movement outside Western countries.
Twenty years after Brazil in 2002, a South American country finally won the World Cup. Is it a feeling of renewed pride for the whole continent?
L. A. : From a French point of view, Latin America is a big monolith, whereas in reality power rivalries between states exist, the distances are enormous, much more than in Europe for example. For Argentina it is a consecration. But I wouldn’t say that Argentina makes the entire Latin American continent proud.
Morocco’s victories during the World Cup in Qatar sparked jubilant scenes across the Arab world. Can this World Cup have a lasting effect on pan-Arab sentiment?
L. A. : When Morocco took the victories, it was the only Arab, African and predominantly Muslim country in competition. It was a bit of a junction, the geopolitical crossroads of representations between these states. Hence this pan-Arab effervescence behind him. From there to say that it will be sustainable… Rivalries for power are extremely strong in the Arab world. Just think of the Gulf countries to realize this.
For a few weeks, for example, we had the impression that Saudi Arabia and Qatar had reconciled. Of course, sport can make it possible to open doors where they are sometimes closed: the diplomacy of ping-pong, in 1971, had seen an exchange of Chinese and American table tennis players for several weeks and made it possible to re-establish diplomatic ties between the China and the United States. In the present case, it is impossible to say whether this is the beginning of a lasting pan-Arab movement. But these scenes show that certain representations that we thought had been forgotten persist.