Qatar 2022 proves FIFA are unfit for purpose

No need for Panorama investigations – FIFA have proved themselves unworthy of governing football and its greatest tournament. Waiting on tenterhooks for the decision of the 22 Executive Committee members, I was shocked and appalled to find that they have chose Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and, worse, Qatar in 2022.

Let’s start with Russia. The only 2018 bidding nation that was awarded a “medium risk” rating on the technical reports that FIFA spent £3m commissioning (the other three bids were rated “low risk”), Russian football has a massive, all-pervasive problem with racism that has gone untackled by the game’s authorities. In a high-profile recent example, Peter Odemwingie, the black Nigerian forward, was sold by Lokomotiv Moscow to West Brom over the summer and, in response, the Lokomotiv fans unfurled a banner saying “Thanks West Brom” with a banana in the middle. Russian authorities insisted the banner was “not racist” and nobody was punished. They argued that “to get a banana” is a common slang term in Russia for failing a test of some kind, but the phrase “existed in the time of the Soviet Union and has almost disappeared from the slang”, according to Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy director of the Russian SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis. This on top of stories from many other black footballers who have all suffered similar abuse from Russian fans. FIFA talks a good game about respect and purging racism from football, but it’s still the same old organisation that issues harsher fines to South African bar owners who write “welcome to the World Cup” in their windows for commercial infringement than it does to clubs or nations whose fans display racist behaviour. If FIFA was at all serious about stamping out racism, they would have refused to consider Russia as a host nation until the situation improved. That would get them to do something about it.

But Qatar 2022 makes Russia look like a good choice. The only bid from either year to receive a “high risk” rating, it means that the two highest-risk bids were given the tournament – why did FIFA spend so much money on commissioning the technical reports if they weren’t going to listen to them? Here’s what else makes Qatar 2022 such an awful idea:

• In Qatar, slavery is legal. “Homosexual behaviour” is not.
• In Qatar, women are second class citizens.
• The Qatar bid has promised to invent technology that can aircondition the stadia during matches. But what are they going to do outside the stadia, where temperatures will be in the region of 55 degrees Celsius?
• Qatar say they’ll let Israel in if they qualify, and Israeli fans too. But what if Israel don’t qualify? Will Israeli fans still be allowed to enter the country? Did FIFA ask this question, and if so, why haven’t we been told the answer?
• Qatar is smaller than Connecticut. It’s smaller than Yorkshire. It has one city. In this city there are going to be 12 stadia. The entire country has a population of 1.7 million. How is a country that size supposed to deal with the amount of visitors who will flock to the World Cup (anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000, according to reports)?

The top two points are the most important of all. Qatar should have been discounted from candidacy immediately on human rights grounds. You simply cannot give that kind of credibility to a country still in the 15th century when it comes to attitudes to slavery, homosexuality, and women. Regardless of Qatar’s ability to actually stage the thing effectively, you can’t reward that. FIFA make a lot of noise about football being a force for good, but giving Qatar the World Cup won’t change anything. If a naughty child wants a Playstation, you tell him he can’t have it until he changes his ways. You don’t buy it for him first and then ask nicely. FIFA’s decision is a joke on all levels, an indictment of their desire for cash over the betterment of the game. If Sepp Blatter wasn’t so desperate to win a fourth term as President and secure his Nobel Peace Prize legacy by taking the World Cup to historic regions, he wouldn’t have held the biddings for 2018 and 2022 at the same time, because of course that is going to cause collusion and underhanded deals. There can be no doubt that part of Qatar’s victory (and Russia’s as well) has come from agreements between bids to swap votes in the different bids. Mohammed bin Hammam, Qatar’s representative on the FIFA Ex-Co, openly confirmed that Qatar and Spain/Portugal had agreed to swap votes but that “this is not collusion. It’s perfectly legal”. How can you stand for that and call yourself a clean organisation?

If FIFA won’t recognise its own flaws then others will have to do it for them. Someone has to stand up to them. It might need national FAs to break away from FIFA to get something done. But this has got to be put right for the good of the game.

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