Since FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar in 2010, the tournament has been ensnared in a tangled web of scandals. Qatar has been accused of bribing Ecuador players to lose their FIFA World Cup 2022 opener, scheduled for Sunday in Al Khor.
The FIFA World Cup 2022 is finally here, with hosts Qatar set to face Ecuador in the opener on Sunday, at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor. The hosts have had to get past countless controversies to reach this situation. Some of the accusations revolve around Qatar paying bribes to win their World Cup bid and also allegations of human rights abuse for their migrant workers. Now the Arab country finds itself caught in another fresh scandal, just a day before their World Cup opener.
According to Amjad Taha, an expert in strategic political affairs and regional director of the British centre in Saudi Arabia, Qatar allegedly bribed eight Ecuadorian players 7.4 million dollars to lose the opener. According to an analysis by the Guardian, at least 6,500 migrant laborers have died in Qatar since the tournament was awarded to the country in 2010.
Global tensions around the competition have been further inflamed by FIFA’s controversial decision to move it to the northern hemisphere’s winter to avoid Qatar’s infernal summer heat, a move that critics have seized on as proof that FIFA is bending over backward to accommodate an already-troublesome host. And this isn’t the first time a World Cup has been caught up in geopolitical controversies.
Qatar apparently intends to use the 2022 World Cup to promote a positive image of the country abroad, the tournament has, in contrast, come to introduce and educate many global audiences to the state in largely negative terms.
For ascendant nations like Qatar, the benefits of hosting the World Cup are still very real. “Qatar is a small state, and for small states, the main objective in international affairs is visibility,” said Danyel Reiche, a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University Qatar, where he leads a research initiative on the political and economic legacy of the World Cup. “Apart from visibility, it’s also about having some influence in international affairs and being able to punch above [your] weight.” Ultimately, though, the primary obstacle to overhauling FIFA remains the World Cup’s unparalleled popularity.