A nervous silence fell over the room as Sepp Blatter stepped up to his podium at FIFA's headquarters in Zurich on 2nd December 2010. In just a few moments time, either Japan, Australia, South Korea, Qatar or the United States of America would receive a great honour; the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
It was a decision which needed to be made carefully after the many controversies of the 2010 World Cup just five months previously. An experienced football nation, perhaps the USA or South Korea, would have appeared a safe option.
But that's not what Sepp Blatter announced. Instead, he awarded the 2022 World Cup to a nation who would play with lives like they were football players who could simply be bought and disposed of at will.
This is the story of how Qatar used soft power and sportswashing to justify their Killer World Cup.
In football terms, the reaction in the room was somewhat reminiscent of a goal for an away team. A split second of stunned silence, people turning to each other making sure they weren't the only one to see it. Then a roar, not from the masses, but the small pocket of underdogs tucked away in the corner, who all of a sudden feel ten feet tall, as though they can take on the world (or in this case, welcome it).
When asked many years later about the decision to award Qatar the tournament, Blatter had a blunt response:
"For me, it is clear: Qatar is a mistake. The choice was bad."
This decision was announced some 4371 days before a ball was kicked at the 2022 World Cup, but it was this vote, which also saw Russia awarded the 2018 World Cup, that sentenced over 6,000 people to their deaths.
The way in which Qatar allegedly won the World Cup bid arguably set the tone for how they would utilise football's showpiece event. It was reported in 2023 that the Qatar National Bank (QNB) had directly sent funds to the committee members who were in charge of voting for the World Cup host between February 2009 and December 2010; voting took place in December 2010.
Despite an enormous corruption scandal in 2015 uncovering evidence of wide-spread ethical wrongdoing and illegal activity by eight people who had voted during World Cup host selection, Qatar kept their prize. Everyone knew they had bought the World Cup, yet no one had the means to stop them.
It's ironic really that Qatar used hard power to secure the ultimate opportunity to demonstrate soft power.
Soft Power
The term soft power was coined by Joseph Nye in his 1990 book "Bound to Lead", and in 2016 he explained this concept further, saying:
"Power is the ability to get what you want from others. Coercion and payment I call hard power; the ability to get what you want through attraction and persuasion is soft power.
"When the Berlin Wall (came) down it did not go down under the artillery of hard power, it went down by people using hammers and bulldozers; they had been attracted and persuaded."
So if, in 1989, either East or West Germany had decided to shoot the Berlin Wall down with missiles and cross into the other half, that would've been hard power. But the decision of the people to tear it down brick-by-brick was a result of the soft power influences on them.
In the space of 12 years, Qatar demonstrated the differences between hard and soft power. Whilst it was hard power they'd used to win the bidding process for the World Cup, they attempted to use the World Cup as a form of soft power to attract and persuade Western minds to the Qatari way of thinking.
Both the money and facilities the Middle Eastern nation were able to provide were state of the art, and will likely beat even that of the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada. Qatar spent a stratospheric $220 billion on the tournament, some 15.5 times the previous highest spend on a single football tournament.
On top of that, the entire tournament took place in and around the new city of Doha, making travel to and from matches incredibly straightforward for both teams and supporters.
These are of course positives to the tournament taking place in Qatar.
But as sickening as it is to suggest, Qatar attempted to use this flamboyant, modern World Cup to brush aside the fact that over 6,700 people had died preparing the very tournament their lives had been laid down for.
Another way of referring to the concept of soft power, perhaps more pertinent to the Qatar World Cup, is "winning hearts and minds". This is an expression first used by General Gerald Tamper in 1952.
His mission had been to quash a communist incursion in Malaya. He did this by encouraging soldiers not only to defeat their enemies, but also to gain the support of the locals by winning their "hearts and minds".
Qatar attempted to do exactly this by putting on a spectacular World Cup in 2022, the like of which the world had literally never seen. It was the first World Cup in the Middle East, and presented a rare opportunity for this tiny country, largely surrounded by the Persian Gulf, to open their doors to the Western world.
The goal of the tournament was not to win it; Qatar had never qualified before and likely wouldn't have done so had they not been hosting it. Instead, the goal was to take away from the plethora of controversial human rights issues the country was notorious for and instead paint the picture of Qatar in the West as one of incredible riches and sporting opportunities.
Using sports to gain international (and domestic) legitimacy is a concept known as sportswashing. Qatar attempted to use this concept to change the perception of their World Cup from a Killer World Cup to a "killer" World Cup.
Sportswashing
Speaking on the Sportswashing Panel at the Football Writing Festival last year, Molly Blackall from the i Paper described sportswashing as using influence and attraction to mold a global image or spread a message to achieve diplomatic aims.
Outwardly, Qatar claimed to have football's best interests at heart. When his country was accused of sportswashing over the 2022 World Cup, Qatari Secretary General Hassan al-Thawadi gave a passionate defence of his country's intentions with the tournament:
"12 years of continuous work … dedicated to ensuring this tournament leaves truly transformational social, human, economic and environmental legacies to be remembered.
"We are acutely aware of the spotlight that comes with hosting the greatest show on earth and we have embraced it."
One of the main arguments Qatar and other like-minded Middle Eastern countries have when it comes to sportswashing is that it will genuinely improve their economic development and therefore the lives of their citizens, especially with the gradually decreasing dependence the world has on oil.
BBC Sport's Simon Stone suggested:
"They (Middle Eastern countries) would probably argue that they're diversifying their economy for such a time where crude oil and petrol is not sustainable as a revenue generator."
There is an argument that Qatar had a genuine ambition to be integrated into the Western world. Al-Thawadi echoed this in defence of his country's atrocious human rights record leading up to the World Cup, especially over the work they'd done with Amnesty International to improve Qatar's human rights practices in the wake of the tragedies that had occurred during the preparation.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino, while speaking at a press conference on the day of the tournament's opening match, flipped the sportswashing coin by launching a scathing rant at Western countries over their stance towards the Middle East:
"Reform and change takes time," he said, "it took hundreds of years in our countries in Europe."
This was no doubt a reference to the use of sportswashing by European countries in the past century, with the 1934 World Cup in fascist Italy and the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany both attempting to utilise soft power in a similar way to Qatar's 2022 World Cup bid.
"It takes time everywhere," Infantino continued, "the only way to get results is by engaging... not by shouting."
But in the run-up to the tournament at least, Qatar's plan very much backfired. To begin with, the World Cup was moved from its traditional slot in the Summer to the Winter. This meant interrupting the European Football season to stage a World Cup around a third of the way through the league campaigns.
This was counter-productive from a political standpoint, as it damaged Qatar's chances of winning hearts and minds, because football fans throughout Europe were furious with the re-arranging of the football calendar, especially as it was still healing from the chaotic Covid seasons.
If Qatar wanted to get football fans on their side, re-arranging their well-established calendar was not the most intelligent move they could've pulled.
The real damage however was that in the ten years following Qatar being awarded the World Cup. Over 6,000 migrant workers died in the country whilst working on infrastructure projects, many of which were being undertaken in preparation for the tournament; the figure rose to over 6,700 by the time the opening game kicked off.
Human Rights Violations
There's an element of cruelty to the way in which these men and women lost their lives; they'd taken a risk leaving their homes, some of them leaving their families, to try to make a living in an exciting, emerging country. Their reward for this incredible bravery was death.
One such victim was Mohammad Shahid Miah, a chef who paid almost $5,000 in recruitment fees to go to Qatar from his home country, Bangladesh, to help raise money his family desperately needed. As well as working as a chef, he took a second job as a driver so that he could send some money home to his family.
Mohammad's food was paid for during his stay in Qatar and he was given accommodation, but the quality of these provisions was atrocious. It was so bad in fact that when flooding struck Qatar in 2020, his apartment flooded.
Naturally, when he realised this, he got up from his seat to try to stop the water from damaging his possessions, but he never got the chance to.
Because his apartment had been so hastily put together, the electrics hadn't been wired properly; as soon as his foot came into contact with the water he was electrocuted.
Mohammad died in seconds.
"Every day is a struggle," Mohammad's father Altab Ali said, "we have three daughters and a son. Our only income is from (our) farm.
"They (Qatar) didn't even bother to help send his body home; his compatriots organised a fundraiser."
Not only did Altab Ali have to face the heartbreaking death of his son, but he now has to pay off the loan Mohammad took out to finance his migration to Qatar. On a farmer's wage in Bangladesh, that's a daunting responsibility.
Mohammad's is just one of thousands of devastating cases. The flooding in 2020 was disastrous, as the short clip below shows.
Of course Qatar attempted to distance itself from these deaths; some may have simply been down to the severity of the flooding, but Nick McGeehan, a director at FairSquare Projects, an organisation dedicated to protecting human rights, said that "a very significant proportion" of migrant workers who had died in Qatar were there because of upcoming World Cup.
So how did Qatar possibly think they could get away with fairly blatant abuses of basic human rights?
Their answer was actually incredibly simple; put on a good show.
The Show
By the time the tournament actually began, Qatar's soft power mission was already in full flow, but the spectacular opening ceremony before the host's opening match against Ecuador was the realisation of a dream for the Emir and his entire delegation.
Over the following four weeks, Qatar delivered an excellent experience for supporters both on and off the pitch. Those attending were able to visit festivals and entertainment hubs which reminded them of home, but also museums and landmarks which taught about Qatar's history and beliefs.
All of these amenities were connected by a state-of-the-art rail network built in the city of Doha by migrant workers, some of whom didn't live to enjoy the network they'd died building. But as the tournament went on and supporters became more and more acclimatised to their temporary home in Doha, the less was said about how these facilities had been made available.
But the biggest distraction from Qatar's atrocities was the football itself. The 2022 World Cup became the highest scoring in history, with 172 goals across the 64 matches.
When supporters stepped out into the bowl of the stadium, they were treated to that familiar roar. Passion was in the air, cultures were thrown together in a melting pot of football and, for a couple of hours at least, the supporters, including those watching from home, forgot about where the game was taking place and watched their team.
This was the living, breathing, sportswashing machine Qatar was desperately hoping for when they were awarded the tournament 12 years before.
What Qatar couldn't have counted on however was the conclusion to the tournament. Despite a good political relationship between defending champions France and the host nation, it was France's opponents, Argentina, who Qatar wanted to lift the trophy. Specifically, they wanted Argentina's captain to lift the trophy.
Was Qatar's Sportswashing Successful?
Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest footballer of all time, had no intention of enormously aiding Qatar's sportswashing scheme, but that's what he did nonetheless. Having scored twice in the final itself, Messi netted a penalty in the following shootout, which Argentina won to become World Champions.
It had been a long road from the host awarding ceremony in Zurich in 2010 to the moment Gonzalo Montiel tucked home the winning penalty for Argentina, especially for the victims of Qatar's human rights wrongdoings and the families of those victims.
But as Argentina's staff and players flooded the pitch in pure ecstasy, the thoughts of the football world were not on those 6,700 victims.
Instead, they were with Argentina, especially their captain, Lionel Messi, who was, at last, a world champion. It completed a poetic circle; the best player in the world had won the most significant trophy in the world.
As with any major sporting tournament, the World Cup winners partake in a ceremony shortly after their victory to celebrate their achievement and to give the world the opportunity to recognise their champions.
Again, no mention was made of Qatar's human rights violations as a lavish stage was assembled to a background of tribal roars from the crowd.
To begin with, the ceremony was quite ordinary. Various awards were given out, including Player of the Tournament, which was won by Messi. But when it came to the trophy presentation, it got a little less ordinary.
Messi allowed the Emir of Qatar to place a bisht, a traditional robe worn during Arabic celebrations, on his shoulders before he collected the trophy from FIFA President Gianni Infantino. In all likelihood, Messi simply allowed this to be polite and because it wouldn't affect his ability to celebrate the biggest achievement of his professional career.
However, Professor Mustafa Baig, a lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Exeter, explained that bishts are reserved for special occasions, and that there was real significance to Messi wearing one:
"Only a select few people would wear the bisht," he explained, "they (the Qatari delegation) basically honoured him by putting it over his shoulders. It's like a mark of honour."
The image of the world's greatest footballer lifting the world's greatest trophy above his head while wearing a traditional Arab gown is arguably the lasting legacy of this tournament. Not the fact that any LGBTQ+ supporters who wanted to attend the tournament did so in fear. Not that eight of the people who had been part of the process of selecting Qatar to host the tournament had since been found to be corrupt. And not even the fact that thousands of people had died to deliver what is, after all, a game.
Qatar, in simple words, got away with it. There are currently no international sanctions in place against Qatar, and the University of Michigan estimates that they made a total of $1.56 billion from the tournament.
In a way then, we aren't too much further on, in a sporting sense at least, from where we were 100 years ago with soft power when it comes to sports.
In the same way that fascist Italy and Communist China distracted from their controversial policies through the power of sporting mega events, Qatar have used the World Cup, seemingly successfully, to take the attention away from those 6,700 migrant workers who perished in and around Doha, and instead presented Qatar as an Arabic nation that is very much a part of the Western world.
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