This World Cup summarizes and concentrates in itself the crises of our time. Mercantilism. Corruption and money-king. Inequalities and exploitation. Environmental damage. Political Islam and clash of cultures.
The French president may have pleaded on Thursday that “sport should not be politicized”, the 2022 FIFA tournament is champion of all categories of politicization and scandal.
Money buys everything. Some assessments speak of 200 billion dollars spent by Qatar – all infrastructure combined – to prepare for this four-week “party”.
In comparison: the previous Cup, in Russia, was valued at 10 billion. Cost of the 2014 Sochi Olympics: between 30 and 50 billion. When you think that in 1976, the Montreal Games (about 2 billion) had been described as an “unprecedented financial abyss”…
It is established that Qatar “bought” this cup by distributing the bribes. With figures like Mohammed ben Hamad Al Thani (in Qatar, the leaders are still Al Thani), former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter (chased out by scandals in 2015), or Michel Platini, a great player who later became a coach and administrator of the highest authorities (placed in police custody in 2019).
For Sepp Blatter, the idea was that a spectator sport as popular, as universal as this is a golden opportunity to constantly expand markets to the last corner of Asia, Africa and the Middle -East…
We are far from the “family” World Cups of the last century: the first took place in 1930 in Uruguay, host country and winner of the tournament. The time when a few hundred thousand dollars was enough to organize everything, mainly between Europe and South America.
The 2022 Cup award scandal has gone very high. In 2010, Qatar was a potential customer of France for the purchase of fighter jets. During a famous meal in November of that year, President Nicolas Sarkozy is said to have said to Michel Platini something like: “Make sure that Qatar gets this Cup, then we will have good contracts. A few days later, it was in the pocket.
The 2022 Cup is also the terrible soap opera of exploitation on construction sites. Unfavorable contracts, bonded labor without the right to resign, very low wages, employees chained to their dormitories, pharaonic construction sites where everything had to be built from scratch (eight brand new or renovated stadiums).
Construction sites on which – according to several sources including a daily survey The Guardianin January 2021 — no less than 6,500 foreign workers would have died. By accidents at work, but also by many cases of sunstroke – temperatures sometimes reaching 50 degrees.
According to Riccardo Noury, Italian spokesperson for Amnesty International, author of a damning book on the subject (I Mondiali dello sfruttamento), the Cup in Qatar is the quintessence of “sports whitewashing”: the cleaning up of a bad reputation by governments which thus smooth their detestable image (see: China, Russia).
Without forgetting the ecological dimension, with the organization of the tournament in a country with extreme temperatures… For the first time, we moved the Cup from summer to autumn, upsetting the national calendars. With fully air-conditioned stadiums, for a considerable energy expenditure, in a country already world champion in greenhouse gas emissions per capita.
And then again: alcohol is prohibited near the stadiums, the Qatari ambassador’s outing to FIFA against homosexuals (“deranged minds” who will have to restrain themselves), calls for “decent dress” from visitors, the latest NGO reports on political absolutism and women’s rights in Qatar…
Clash of conservative, authoritarian and misogynistic Islam with the orgy of decadent and mercantile modernity: an explosive cocktail that will not prevent, once again, half of humanity from abandoning themselves to this quadrennial madness.
François Brousseau is an international business analyst
at Here Radio-Canada. [email protected]