World Cup 2022: FIFA will fail in attempts to prevent players speaking out against host nation Qatar – Code
Never mind long-simmering concerns about the host. Soccer’s governing body wants participants to ‘focus on the football,’ writes JASON GAY.
Putting a World Cup in Qatar never made much sense, but now that it’s time for the planet’s biggest football-slash-soccer party to begin, let’s place aside our worries and pesky moralities, and get to the cold, unvarnished truth:
Everything is going to be great, great, great, great, the best World Cup ever, no question about it!
Enjoy the 2022 World Cup, everyone!
Am I doing this right?
I’m trying. FIFA, soccer’s oft-scandalised, barely-credible governing body would very much prefer if everyone shelved their concerns about the first-time host and turned their focus to the pitch. They’ve admonished teams to do exactly that.
“Please, let’s now focus on the football!” read a recent letter to World Cup teams signed by FIFA chief Gianni Infantino.
In other words, stick to the happy talk, the light stuff. Will it be Brazil’s World Cup? France again? Could it be the crescendo for Lionel Messi? Who’s going to be the Cinderella? Will the U.S. escape the group stage? Where am I going to get my beer?
Organisers have made it clear: They think it’s time to stop harping on years-long claims of mistreatment of migrant workers to build the zillions in new stadiums to make the Cup happen — a scenario created by soccer’s willingness to give the Cup to a place utterly lacking in necessary infrastructure.
They’d like everyone to chill about Qatar’s ban on homosexuality — discrimination recently underlined by a yikes comment from a Qatari World Cup ambassador.
“Damage in the mind,” Khalid Salman said in an interview, according to Reuters.
Stop groaning that this World Cup — instead of happening in the traditional summer period — is kicking off in deep November, because of the, uh, rather obvious issue of having a major sporting event in one of the hottest countries on Earth.
(Who’d have thought, right?)
Also: Ignore the hilarity of FIFA’s disgraced former president, Sepp Blatter, coming out and saying awarding the World Cup to Qatar was a “mistake.”
(This is like the Joker coming out and saying oopsie to Batman.)
There’s more to brush aside … the host’s potential logistic issues, lodging issues, traffic issues, and the plain fact that a country the size of Connecticut has never hosted an event of this scale.
If nothing else, please, please, please: Don’t make a big deal about the beer situation. You should not come to Qatar expecting an SEC tailgate, but you will not go without a beverage.
“That drives me crazy,” a senior Qatari organiser told the Journal recently. “Anybody who wants to come to have a drink will be able to, you know, have a drink.”
Come on, everyone! There’s no reason not to take FIFA and the organisers at their word. Qatar 2022 is going to be fine, it really is — fantastic, in fact. Stop hand-wringing and paint your faces!
“We know football does not live in a vacuum and we are equally aware that there are many challenges and difficulties of a political nature all around the world,” the FIFA letter stated. “But please do not allow football to be dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists.”
Translation: We know, we know, it isn’t a perfect situation, we’re not idiots. But don’t be a bunch of killjoys!
We have been here before. The Qatar World Cup isn’t earth’s first feel-good, feel-bad sporting event. Take your pick: the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi … there are plenty of examples of major competitions being awarded to problematic hosts. It’s definitely not a new trend.
Sporting events have long been political weaponry, used by hosts to airbrush an image to the outside world (Berlin Games 1936, for example). These spectacles can be presented as symbols of strength, of a “new era” in the host’s history, even if the old era is lurking around the corner, ready to return when the athletes leave town.
We even have a clever term for it now: sportswashing, as in the deployment of sports to sanitise a host or sponsor’s reputation.
It’s a cynical calculation. But they do it because it works.
As much as we like to assemble our due diligence and claim a conscience, sports governing bodies’ can count on a simple reality: that once the games begin, the excitement and pageantry will take over, and the worries and moral quandaries will shuffle to the side.
It happens again and again, and the media and fans in the U.S. cannot be holy about this. Cognitive dissonance is a big part of sports in this country. We don’t like to look at the societal underbelly here, either. Focus on football is a close cousin of Stick to sports and Shut up and dribble.
What’s notable about Qatar is how the direction to ignore is coming from the top, publicly and brazenly.
FIFA has abandoned any pretence of trying to present itself as an updated, self-aware organisation, alert to the concerns of its members and fans. It wants us to move straight to the studio chitchat and shiny pregame hype, and we dutifully will — fans want to know about the soccer, and this column will invariably yield to enthusiastic accounts of USMNT games and breakout stars, as the pretournament controversies fade into the background.
This is what they count on, because it is what happens.
Until television ratings tank, teams walk off, or sponsors bail en masse, little will change. They get away with it because they know they can get away with it.
So get ready for the 2022 World Cup, and listen to the people in charge: It’s going to be the best World Cup ever. Really great, in fact. Just take it from them. And the rest of us.