World Cup 2018/22: It’s A Rich Man’s World

By Roger Baxter

Far from dying alongside Charles I in 1649, belief in the Divine Right of Kings seems to be alive and kicking in this country. Following the announcement that the 2018 and 2022 World Cups would go to Russia and Qatar respectively, a large proportion of the British press still appear to think that the voting is still going on. Article upon article in last Friday’s papers saw the virtues of the English bid bellowed out again and again, along with myriad statements of how we, and only we, had been robbed. Make no mistake, I would have been ecstatic had the World Cup come to England in 2018. I would have danced in the streets, volunteered at the stadiums, and (yes, FIFA) bought all of the associated merchandise. It transpires that we didn’t in fact get the World Cup, something which, personally, I can live with.

Or rather something I would have been able to live with, had 2018 gone to either of the Spain-Portugal or Netherlands-Belgium bids. Both of these had wonderful presentations and bids (although Spain’s was admittedly a little dull), but evidently suffered, ironically enough, from being regions with an established love of football. In the Scramble for Africa that is the struggle for markets in world football at the moment, FIFA’s corridor of power, the 22-man, select, executive (etc.) committee, voted to bring the World Cup to pastures new. Or, in the confusing Esperanto that is Blatter-speak, “We go to new lands, because the FIFA World Cup has never been in eastern Europe or the Middle East.” Change for change’s sake is not always a good thing, as many of the survivors of Movember will testify.

“But surely World Cups in Russia and Qatar will promote much-needed growth and prosperity,” I hear you cry. That idea is wholly improbable, to say the least. The byzantine bureaucracy that currently governs Russia would, in my opinion, ensure that little of the money generated goes to where it is really needed, while one could hardly argue Qatar needs the financial boost provided when staging a World Cup; they’re doing rather handily already, at least as an economy.

The notion that the growth of the game itself is reason enough to send the tournament east can also be put to rest if we examine the cases of both nations. Russia is hardly an unknown quantity in European football, with teams such as CSKA Moscow winning the UEFA Cup and enjoying high profiles in the Champions League in recent years. They are not South Africa. Their cause does not exactly cry out for development, and if a bid isn’t about development, then it should be down to who would host the best tournament.; and so we find that we’re back again to those bids that failed.

With the choice of Qatar, however, FIFA has ascended from the foothills of flawed logic to the lofty peaks of the ironic and the ridiculous. Far from giving the World Cup to either Australia or the US, which would have been consistent with their policy of bringing the competition to countries in which it can promote sustainable growth in those countries’ football, FIFA plumped instead for the tiny Arabian emirate. To put it bluntly, the World Cup will have nowhere near the same effect on football in Qatar, or even the Middle East, as it would have done in Australia or the US. The nation has very little footballing pedigree, having never been to a World Cup, and not looking likely to until they host it. Furthermore, Qatar’s league is largely ignored by Qataris, who instead much prefer to watch Premier League games beamed over by satellite. Even the all-singing, all-dancing arenas conjured up on the Qatar bid’s powerpoint presentation will be largely dismantled following the end of the tournament, going instead to countries where football actually is developing. This is a noble gesture from Qatar, but it doesn’t mean that FIFA’s logic isn’t flawed, as there is no reason why the money it gleans from a World Cup cannot be directly reinvested at the grassroots level in those deserving countries. Except, of course, that this method is far too quiet for FIFA’s liking.

There are also other reasons why the committee might be viewed as having made the wrong choices. The national newspapers would do better by focusing on FIFA’s essential hypocrisy in their decision, rather than on rampant patriotism, which can itself easily be construed as arrogance. The hypocrisy mentioned is namely that FIFA has decided to go with Russia and Qatar, despite the two bids providing certain ethical and logistical quandaries for the executive board. They, of course, were not fazed, but perhaps they should have been.

The logistical problems of Russia hosting a World Cup remain enormous. Even though the easternmost stadium, in Yekaterinburg, lies on the cusp of European Russia, the vastness of that region alone means a theoretical six-hour flight between games. Even the proposed “cluster” system is unconvincing. Add to that Russia’s problems with corruption down to the level of policemen on the street, and the racism that appears to be endemic within Russian football, particularly in the wake of the recent transfer of Peter Odemwingie from CSKA Moscow, and you have a World Cup that appears less than attractive for both fans and players, both of whom the Zurich aristocrats seem to have forgotten.

They won’t have much to cheer about four years later, either. One can question the feasibility of air-conditioning stadia fully replicating playable conditions. One can question how 50,000 hotel rooms, despite expanding to a promised 95,000, will hold, for example, the two million visitors Germany saw in 2006. One can question whether the areas for fans to drink without breaking the law will materialise to the extent that is needed, or whether these will get the AC treatment; or one can raise the issue of how roughly 80% of Qatar’s population are South Asian immigrants working in what practically amounts to indentured servitude, which presents a rather damning contrast to Blatter’s own “modern slavery” comments over Cristiano Ronaldo’s contract at Manchester United. Or one could question how FIFA ignored the fact that Qatar’s imposition of a possible five-year sentence for homosexuality contravenes their own charter. Take your pick.

This whole affair has highlighted that FIFA has become a corporation, selling its sponsors’ products, rather than the federation it claims to be. Rumours of corruption are nigh on unprovable, but, regardless of any illicit shenanigans in the boardroom, both of these World Cups will still be held in the wrong place.