World Cup of Wealth

Retrieved+from+www.duke.edu

Retrieved from www.duke.edu

Cal U'Ren, Sports Reporter

The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) is an egregiously corrupt organization, as demonstrated by the numerous transgressions that have come to light recently. A glaring one still remains though, the 2022 World Cup hosted by Qatar.

The country is wholly unfit to host the world’s largest sporting event, but let’s understand why they are in the first place. Qatar is tiny country roughly the size of Connecticut, but what makes their country special lies underneath their soil. Oil, plentiful supplies of it that amount to the third largest reserve in the world. For a tiny country in a tumultuous region, this has been a godsend, allowing them to be the first Arab nation appointed as hosts of the FIFA World Cup.

The country’s average person makes over 100,000 dollars per year, and they currently maintain the highest Gross Domestic Product per Capita in the world, meaning they sell and make money far more than they spend. The countries’ financial state compiled with the plentiful amount of bribery in FIFA has left many wondering just how fair their selection was. Switzerland has already issued an independent investigation into the selection process that they hope will release more facts to the public in hopes of getting the venue location changed.

If potential large-scale corruption isn’t enough for you consider the most practical flaw in the whole situation, the weather. The World Cup is generally held in June or July where the temperatures in Qatar range from 100 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. For a sport that requires players to run for nearly 90 minutes straight, this is obviously problematic. The health of those involved became such a concern that the date has now been changed to December, directly in the middle of the season for most club teams sending players off to an international tournament.

There are litanies of other difficulties facing the host nation, mainly revolving around cultural differences that don’t conform to the rest of the world and many of the teams participating in the event. In Qatar it is illegal to be homosexual, with a possible prison sentence of seven years for an expatriate and much stiffer penalties for natural born Qatari citizens. Women’s rights were also not legally recognized until the 1990’s, with the first female judge being appointed in 2010, yet women still remain lower on the class hierarchy. Alcohol sales have already been banned for the event as well, to adhere to religious customs of the region.

The county also uses a “kafala” system, where migrant workers are subject to near slave-like conditions and see their rights stripped away as they are forced to live in squalid conditions making little to no money. The kafala system has been an integral part of building the necessary stadiums for the event yet it has allowed hundreds of workers to die with over six years still remaining.

The desert nation has recently grown into a powerful force within the Middle East, but this should not make it an appropriate host for an event of such a global scale. Unless sponsors pull out or widespread corruption is uncovered by new investigations, the world will watch as a country unsuitable to host the World Cup does just that.