The Dark Controversies Behind the 2022 World Cup
Written by James McGuirk
Thumbnail and header photo by My Grandfather’s Cat
From November to December 2022, the Men’s FIFA World Cup dominated the news. There was soccer everywhere you looked in the last month and a half of the year. The tournament was filled with many great games and highlights that you can read about; However, this World Cup was not just eventful because of the games.
“My life here is like a prison” were the words used by a worker in Qatar who helped build a stadium. A huge reason for the constant news was the large amount of controversy to come out of this World Cup. The whole world was watching as a plethora of issues and scandals arose from the World Cup. The main reason this World Cup was so controversial compared to the previous was because of the tournament's host country, Qatar. Qatar is a conservative, religious state, and the country's morals often do not align with the rest of the world.
Qatar is one of the wealthiest countries in the world per capita. There are around three million people in Qatar, and around two-thirds of the people are migrant workers. Qatar is not a country known for soccer, so a lot of preparation had to be done to host the World Cup; an estimated $300 billion was spent. Qatar put that money into building multiple state-of-the-art football stadiums, hotels, cruise ships, and a plethora of other things. The amount Qatar spent was much higher than Russia in the 2018 World Cup, which cost around $11.7 billion. That much construction has a substantial environmental impact, yet the most prominent issue arose from the treatment of the workers.
Image sourced from CNN.
Qatar seemed to cut costs inhumanely in how their migrant workers were treated. The migrant workers built all of these incredible structures just for the World Cup, yet even though they were building places of luxury, they were forced to live in harsh conditions. The workers in Qatar are provided with housing, but the housing is awful. There could be 14 workers all residing in one dirty room, sharing a bathroom and kitchen with even more workers. Imagine 14 people all living in one small, dirty room, forced to share one smelly bathroom and the same bad food. The story often goes that they have amassed debt in their native country and have come to Qatar to get the money to pay it off. The workers have reported that they are often paid less than what was agreed and commonly do not get paid until months later than promised. The workers are tied to their higher-ups; they’re not permitted to leave Qatar or even the job without their boss' permission. These migrant workers are forced to work in slave-like conditions with constant deaths and injuries during the process, and it is all in the effort of Qatar saving money to spend elsewhere. It is reported that thousands of migrant workers in Qatar have died in recent years. With so much protest, Qatar agreed to reforms, introducing a minimum wage and other benchmarks for employers to treat employees better. Reportedly the reforms did not stop many employers who treated their workers like enslaved people despite the reforms.
Going into the World Cup, the captains from England, Wales, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark were planning to wear OneLove armbands to support LGBTQ+ rights. They were to wear armbands because of Qatar’s laws on same-sex relationships. In Qatar, you can be arrested or imprisoned just for being gay. It is a huge problem when the host of an event that brings the world together openly does not support fundamental human rights like freedom of sexuality. The players were concerned for the safety of their LGBTQ+ fans traveling to Qatar to watch the event. Only a few hours before the first match, the captains were going to wear the armbands; they announced that the plan had been scrapped because the teams heard from FIFA that they could be fined or even given a yellow card if they were wearing the bands. The teams said they would have been okay with a fine for wearing the bands but were unwilling to receive penalties. Before kickoff, in a game against Japan, Germany took a team photo. When posing for the photo, all of the players from Germany covered their mouths with their hands to suggest they were being gagged. This pose was to protest that their voice had been taken away by FIFA, not allowing them to wear the armbands. The photo made rounds across the internet and stood as a symbol against the oppressive rules dictated by Qatar and enacted through FIFA.
Image sourced from Cloudinary.
A controversy that began when FIFA announced Qatar would be the location of the 2022 Men’s World Cup was that Qatar bribed FIFA for the tournament to be hosted there. It is not common knowledge how FIFA decides the World Cup locations, but the process is supposed to be fair and produce the best location for the tournament. To summarize the process, different countries worldwide submit a bid, which is just an application to be considered. FIFA then visits and assesses each country and decides which would best accommodate the tournament. People familiar with the process were confused when Qatar was announced as the 2022 location because it did not seem like the best fit. The country is not known for soccer, and has never had a team qualify for the World Cup, so why were they hosting? Qatar is also an incredibly hot country with an average summer temperature of 37°C that often rises above 45°C. To combat the heat, Qatar implemented cooling air conditioning systems in all of its stadiums and changed the time slot for the World Cupfrom June-July to November-December. There was much criticism over changing the dates because it interrupted the schedule the players had grown accustomed to. People doubted the legitimacy of Qatar’s bid because of the number of hoops they had to jump through just to be able to host the World Cup.
Fans were also assuming bribery due to FIFA’s history of corruption. Two months before Qatar was announced to be the location, FIFA suspended two members due to a vote-selling scandal. In 2011, Mohammed bin Hammam, a Qatari soccer official and former FIFA executive, got a lifetime ban from FIFA for different corruption charges. Then in 2014, everyone’s suspicions were confirmed when many emails were leaked that suggested Bin Mohammed had paid millions to other FIFA officials. In 2015, nine officials of FIFA were accused of a slew of things, such as money laundering and racketeering. These constant accusations have consistently been happening against FIFA. Currently, there has been no conclusive evidence that Qatar bribed FIFA, but it is very likely, given all the factors that support that fact.
There was a worldwide backlash in protest to the lack of human rights in Qatar. Many fans begged their football associations to boycott the tournament entirely. None did but claimed they would find other ways of protest. France was able to find a way to somewhat boycott the tournament; multiple cities across the country, including Paris, refused to broadcast the tournament at all. With the controversy and protest, FIFA put out a heavily criticized statement that read, “... please do not allow football to be dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists. At FIFA, we try to respect all opinions and beliefs without handing out moral lessons to the rest of the world. Please, let’s now focus on football!” This statement from FIFA becomes quite hypocritical when considering the number of issues being protested that they had a hand in causing. Despite active protests and boycotts, the 2022 World Cup was still massively successful for all parties involved. Qatar had a massive surge in tourism thanks to the soccer fans, and with the tournament over, it no longer has the world's eyes on the country to protest its ongoing human rights issues. FIFA earned a whopping $7.5B in revenue thanks to the tournament and, although harshly criticized, got to continue without suffering any harsh consequences.