When, in December 2010, Qatar was announced as the host of the 2022 World Cup, desolation took hold of all members of the North American bid, considered the favorite. All but one.
“It’s impossible for Qatar to host an event like the World Cup. [a Fifa] will come to us. We are going to be the headquarters”, believed the president of the local federation, Sunil Gulati.
Twelve years later, the leader’s prediction did not come true. In the streets of Doha, capital of Qatar, the message that the tournament is about to start can be seen in every corner. The country’s flags mix with the image of La’eeb, the tournament’s mascot, alongside words like amazing (incredible, in English), celebrate (celebrate, in English) and Haya, an Arabic term that designates decency, modesty and makes reference also to “Hayya Hayya”, theme song of the World Cup.
“It is a victory for all those who believe that an Islamic and Arab country can host the World Cup,” he told Sheetin early 2020, the secretary general of the Committee for Execution and Legacy of the 2022 World Cup, Hassan Al Thawadi.
Qatar’s candidacy has survived allegations of corruption, Fifagate, trade blockades by neighboring nations, fear of the heat, accusations of human rights abuses and the biggest sportswashing in history. The word summarizes the use of sport by a government or country to change its image in the eyes of the international community.
The organization’s discourse, even four days before the first game, has not changed. Visitors must adapt to Qatar. Not the other way around. This has not been put to the test so far because there are few tourists visible in the main points of Doha. The organization is sure that this will change in the coming days.
“If the press shows what sportswashing is, it ceases to be sportswashing because it starts alerting people to what is happening. It loses effectiveness”, says Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International in the United Kingdom, the NGO that most denounced cases of human rights violations in Qatar over the past decade.
Hosting the World Cup, owning Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) –Neymar, Messi and Mbappé’s team– and investing billions of dollars in football are pieces of a puzzle to understand what the country’s royal family wants . If Qatar performs sportwshing, it is a scale never seen before.
Doha is a construction site. From the construction or reformulation of eight stadiums, to infrastructure works, the erection of buildings and a brand new city (Lusail), the nation has a project that goes beyond hosting a football tournament, however big it may be.
The local government even managed what was considered unimaginable: changing the date of the competition. Go from June-July, Qatari summer with temperatures above 50ºC, to the end of the year.
“Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup is part of a strategy, a way to engage with the world, build relationships and create interdependence with other countries. Qatar has become a legitimate and important member of the international community, in part for hosting the World Cup”, analyzes Simon Chadwick, professor of Geopolitical Economics at Skema Business School in Paris.
The World Cup is part of the plan so that, by 2030, Qatar will also be recognized as a tourist hub, reducing dependence on oil and natural gas extraction, the pillar of the national economy.
The strategy has the endorsement of Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thami. Your photo is everywhere in Doha. Often alongside his father, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who took power in a 1995 coup d’état.
In some spots, it is still possible to find images hanging after the 2018 World Cup, in which the emir is accompanied by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, host of the tournament that year, and the FIFA representative, Gianni Infantino.
Being more influential, for Qatar, also means having protection from enemies. Two of them are on the other side of the border: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia initiated a blockade against the headquarters of the 2022 World Cup for allegedly supporting terrorism, something that Qatar has always denied. The matter was resolved only in 2021, also with FIFA’s diplomatic efforts.
Not that all the organization’s directors were so sympathetic to the Arab idea of holding the event.
“For me it is clear: Qatar was a mistake. The choice was bad,” former FIFA president Sepp Blatter told Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.
Blatter preferred the US victory and had political agreements for that. But the president of the Asian Federation and member of the executive committee of FIFA was the Qatari Mohammed bin Hammam. Afraid of losing power due to his rival’s influence and the money from Qatar’s candidacy, the then president relented.
Hammam was banned from football in 2014 after documents were leaked to the press that he participated in the payment of bribes to FIFA members to try to run for president.
In recent days, Infantino has urged people to forget the allegations about human rights and the LGBTQA+ community and focus only on football. The statement provoked reactions from international entities.
Faced with complaints about the working conditions of the immigrant force in the country, who receive low wages and, in the summer, work in heat above 50ºC, the government of Qatar responds that the World Cup was the force for change. It provoked alterations in the labor legislation and in the rules for immigration. For Amnesty International, these were small, not fully implemented and will have dubious consequences.
The candidacy survived until the report of the American lawyer Michael Garcia, hired by FIFA to carry out an independent investigation of the process of choosing the host cities for the last World Cups and to investigate allegations of corruption. At the end of 2014, he left the body citing “lack of leadership”, but produced a report that football authorities were reluctant to release in full. It was the hope of those who wanted to change the location of the 2022 World Cup.
But Garcia pointed out that not only Qatar has committed inappropriate actions to get votes. Other nominations as well. Including the United States.
Again, Qatar won over critics and naysayers. Because of this, it will be, as people in Doha never tire of repeating, the first Arab country to host the biggest sporting event in the world.
“The World Cup is not exclusive to one region; It is an event for everyone. Everyone wants to host it and should have that right. We want to do this for the Arab world,” said Al Thawadi to Folha almost three years ago. years old.
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