With Three Years To Go Can Qatar Pull It Off?
Sean O'Conor
Qatar 2022 has not been the easiest sell.
There were gasps in 2010 when a nation with negligible footballing heritage won the right to host the World Cup ahead of the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Accusations of bribery quickly swirled around the FIFA Executive Committee's decision to hand the little Arab state the keys to the Cup, as well as to Russia for 2018. Allegations were raised earlier this year that the nation's TV station Al-Jazeera had offered $400 million to FIFA in exchange for a successful bid.
There has been persistent criticism of the hosting by Amnesty and other watchdogs of Qatar's kafala (kafeel) system of employment which allows migrant workers to be exploited.
Qatar has had more complaints over the disruption to the global football calendar demanded by a winter World Cup. Yet as time ticks on, the reality is that the 2022 tournament in Qatar will go ahead for better or worse.
An early draft of English Premier League fixtures released last week envisages a domestic match day nine days before the tournament begins and then a resumption less than a week after it ends. Compare this to the month-long gap between the end of the 2017-'18 domestic season and the start of the 2018 World Cup and the 25 days before the 2018-'19 season began.
The English top flight's winter break in 2022 will be kiboshed, leaving international players exhausted and/or prone to injury that season. Accommodating Qatar 2022 is a challenge for the world's leagues and associations.
Attacks on Qatar have also come from LGBT groups appalled that the tournament will take place in a land where being gay is illegal, while the relegated status of women in the Middle East does not tally with the spirit of growingly equal representation disseminated by last summer's Women's World Cup in France.
To boot, neighbouring states Bahrein, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen cut commercial and diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017, on account of its support for rebel groups in the region such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In light of this, FIFA President Gianni Infantino's idea of expanding the 2022 tournament to bordering countries bit the dust and fans travelling to the cup will have to avoid those nations as flights and sailings between them and Qatar have stopped.
So more than any time since the 1978 tournament travelled to the repressive Argentine junta, FIFA is under the cosh for its choice of World Cup venue. In their Zurich H.Q., Gianni Infantino and colleagues are surely counting the days until 2022 is over.
Qatar's hosting was always going to be controversial as it was chosen amid Sepp Blatter's notoriously corrupt reign, before the FBI arrests in 2015 cleaned the Augean stables of FIFA.
Blatter's infamous Executive Committee from 2010 is no more, with all of its crazy gang, including Michel Platini, the man said to have been instrumental in ensuring Qatar's win, 'Pirate of the Caribbean' Jack Warner, Angel "All the Fish are Sold" Maria Villar and the Chief Executive himself all swept out the door as the global clamour for change got too loud.
Another victim of the cull was the Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam, who had challenged Blatter for the Presidency before his own bid and reputation evaporated when it was revealed he had brought cash via Warner to bribe Caribbean representatives.
But corruption allegations aside, inherent weaknesses with the 2022 hosting remain, not least the fact it entails a World Cup in December instead of in June and July. Fans used to having the big show chime with their summer holidays will instead have to take time off work and forego the run-up to Christmas in order to jet to Qatar.
As if the state did not have enough bad PR, The IAAF World Athletic Championships in Doha last month left a bad impression. Images beamed around the world of the near-empty Khalifa International Stadium in the opening days have done nothing to counter accusations that Qatar is the wrong place to host a global sporting event.
The heat was tough too for the athletes, with a third of the women's marathon entrants failing to complete the course which had begun at midnight anyway to avoid the worst of it.
November/December temperatures in Qatar are less oppressive however, and resembling a European summer, the thermometer should not pose a problem to fans or players.
For the World Athletics Championships, a local population of only 2.6 million, only about 300,000 of whom are native, appeared too small to generate enough ticket sales.
It was extraordinary to think that there was not any attempt to hand out free seats once it became clear that ticket sales were non-existent. Surely they will learn their lesson and ensure World Cup stadia do not sit empty too.
The World Cup is a different kettle of fish of course as visiting teams tend to bring hordes of travelling fans in a way athletics does not, and football is popular in Qatar. This December's FIFA Club World Cup should see full stands as Liverpool and the winner of the Copa Libertadores compete with four other sides for the trophy.
Yet the question remains however whether the World Cup's December scheduling and Middle Eastern location will draw the same numbers of fans who have travelled to recent tournaments.
Although the World Cup bid was won on the understanding that gigantic air conditioning units would cool the stadia from the 50C Arab summer, winter hosting soon became the only realistic option.
When the fans do arrive, will they find enough options beyond the football to occupy them for a month, especially when drinking establishments will be few and far between? For all its impressive modernity and unique desert setting, the 2022 host nation surely does not have as many attractions as the defeated bidders.
Against such factors, Qatar won the bid quite simply because it was extremely rich. In July 2019, Grant Suneson in USA Today wrote,
"Qatar is, by far the richest country in the world, with a GNI (gross national income) per capita of $116,799...more than $20,000 higher than any other nation."
Qatar Sports Investments, who own Paris Saint-Germain, the Aspire Academy training centre and the various sporting events the nation has hosted are all part of a soft power offensive to make Qatar a big player in world sport. In the same way, Qatari soft power is manifesting itself in European museum redevelopments and skyscrapers.
The little Arab nation is said to be spending $200 billion on 2022, which makes it by far the costliest World Cup on record, while pledges to recycle the stadia and make them as green as possible are encouraging.
The first line of the Doha metro opened in June and two further lines are scheduled to be operating in plenty of time for the World Cup, relieving Qatar's traffic jams and ensuring 2022 supporters can travel to venues with ease.
The whole project is immense with a whopping seven new stadia rising up from the desert sands.
One expects the transport and facilities to be first class from a country that opulent and desperate to impress, but the overall fan experience will surely be bizarre in a land where street life has mostly been replaced by activity within high-end shopping malls.
Alcohol laws are set to be relaxed for 2022, but the replication of the fan zones which are now an integral part of tournaments remains in question in a state which formally forbids alcohol and outdoor drinking.
That the Middle East as a whole has never hosted a World Cup remains the best argument in favour of Qatar 2022, but so many cultural clashes remain on the horizon.
One suspects FIFA will be looking forward to 2026, where an unprecedented three-country hosting (Canada, Mexico and the USA) and 48 finalists will be far less of a problem than the next World Cup.
2022 will be a new and strange experience for everyone, that is for sure.
Some will never be convinced it was a wise choice in 2010 and not all criticisms have been wholly valid, but whatever the challenges, finding the money to meet them will not be an issue.
This remains Qatar's biggest trump card which they must play for all it is worth.
It is up to FIFA and the Qatari organising committee to allay the fears, slay the criticisms and pull off the big show, exploding prejudices in the process.
If they do and 2022 lives in the memory as a spectacularly smoothly organised tournament for players and supporters alike, the little desert state may well have pulled off the biggest football miracle of all time.
© Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
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