A nation consisting of over ninety per cent desert will be hosting one of the world’s greatest sporting occasions in 2022. A petro-mafia state will be hosting the same event in 2018.
Money is bound to be squandered, and much of it already has been.
With Qatar and Russia the victorious bidders in the latest FIFA bun fight, time will tell whether that less than distinguished organisation made the right choice. World football needed a reformation years ago, but the Martin Luther of the game has yet to pen his various theses on the chapel of corruption.
In the end, these factors do not matter. Sport on this level is power, and a very potent one too. While FIFA has displayed a breathtakingly suicidal indifference to the game in various parts of the world, there is little doubt that holding such a competition in Russia signals an inexorable march of the game.
To place it in Qatar is a gesture of similar import, attempting to pitch the standard of the game in the Middle East.
Resentment is perfectly logical to the choices made by the committee of 22 members in secret ballot. The English contenders cite a near perfect presentation, one that ticked every box required.
As FIFA president Sepp Blatter himself admitted in May, England’s offer was ‘the easiest bid in the world. They have the football already organised. They have everything’ (The Independent, May 5).
In the words of Britain’s deflated Prime Minister, David Cameron, ‘we had the best technical bid, the best commercial bid. No-one could identify any risks coming to England. But it turns out that’s not enough.’
Like many job applications, perfection is never enough when other considerations are at stake. One can be punished for being the giver of plenty. As FIFA has demonstrated in the past, and very recently, the appropriate payments must be made. Members must be wooed, seduced, sometimes placated.
It was evident that the process behind picking the winners was, as it has been in the past, marred. FIFA executive members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii were barred from voting, but not those accused of receiving payments.
Indeed, FIFA’s general secretary Jérôme Valcke did not bat an eyelid when he stated that the decisions were political in nature.
Criticism was also leveled against Qatar, who will be the first country in the Middle East to host the event. For one thing, it pit the US to the post, despite the President and a cast of luminaries being enrolled to promote the cause.
Two million fans will be hoping to make the best of it in a country that may have more sand than sensibility. In terms of population, it is a mere 1.7 million.
Its laws will be deemed repellent for various fans – those who enjoy a tipple (the country is bone dry in more than one respect), and those of same-sex preferences.
Sheik Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani is hardly concerned.
Qatar, after all, won. Other countries will also take heart in mounting a bid. ‘Thank you for believing in change, for expanding the game and for giving Qatar a chance.’
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
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