Anyway - it happened and since 2010 oil-rich Qatar has worked tirelessly to build eight stadiums - employing 30,000 foreign workers in the process. All this cost around US $8.5 billion. Nobody knows exactly how many migrant construction workers have died in order to make sure Qatar is ready for The World Cup. Amnesty International say up to 15,000 have died but others say up to 7,000. It is a huge death toll just to stage a sporting event. There are still lots of questions about the amounts of compensation Qatar has actually paid out.
The prize should never have gone to Qatar. Soon thousands of football fans from around the world will be flying in to support their teams. As the population of Qatar is less than three million, there will presumably be few home-based football supporters to fill the remaining seats.
The carbon footprint of the tournament will be as big as The Persian Gulf and there's another matter that should concern us. Being a conservative Islamic state, Qatar will not be welcoming members of the LGBTQ community who will surely be wise to watch their step in such a hostile environment.
I plan to watch World Cup matches on TV as usual but with resentment. Even the ex-chairman of FIFA, the odious Sepp Blatter admitted this week that the tournament should never have been awarded to Qatar. It is a crying shame that he did not speak out much earlier when the Qatari government were courting him.
Hasn't FIFA been involved in other controversies. I don't know what as I'm not a soccer fan.
ReplyDeleteFIFA has been run like a fiefdom.
DeleteI would assume that someone in FIFA made a lot of money through a bribe to award Qatar the World Cup which is bad enough but then people actually died building the infrastructure. WTF!
ReplyDeleteEverybody should be boycotting this.
I imagine that more than one member of the FIFA elite profited from their disgraceful decision.
DeleteThey've built eight entire stadiums? My city has been working for 9 months on a single 30 metre stretch of footpath and still haven't finished.
ReplyDeleteI hope no workers died on that stretch of footpath.
DeleteThere has been much public discussion on this in my country, too. Many artists have spoken out and said they won't watch the matches on TV, in spite of being football fans, but they do not wish to support this event staged in a country with so little regard for human rights (don't let me get started on women's rights!).
ReplyDeleteAs far as I'm concerned, I am not a football lover as such and so won't have to make a sacrifice NOT watching. But I am not surprised about the decision based entirely on money - that's what FIFA is at its core.
I should have mentioned Qatar's treatment of women. "Qatar's constitution enshrines equality among citizens. But the U.S. State Department and human rights groups say the Qatari legal system discriminates against women when it comes to their freedom of movement and issues of marriage, child custody and inheritance."
DeleteI iz needed Australian translations? We don't have chavs here but bogans are the equivalent.
ReplyDeleteQatar being awarded the honour of hosting the Cup is a disgraceful case of sports washing, clearly condoned by FIFA.
In the UAE a tour guide was quite frank about the appalling treatment and living conditions for Bangladeshi construction workers. I heard later he was executed for his frank speaking.
FIFA are to blame and in selecting Qatar, they have put players and supporters in a very compromising position.
DeleteBlood on their hands and how many palms were greased?
ReplyDeleteIt brings football into even more disrepute.
South Africa is football mad and I can see why FIFA chose to take the tournament there in 2010 but Qatar? No way!
DeleteI suppose England should boycott the tournament and we should not watch it on our televisions if we feel so strongly about it but we won't.
ReplyDeleteFIFA should have never put us in this position.
DeleteI wouldn't go. Hard on the teams that are in the tournament,
ReplyDeleteHard on the players too. For many this will be their only chance to play in the planet's top tournament.
DeleteSurely the World Cup and the Olympics will realize that the cost isn't worth it and just select a dozen or so places already built and rotate among them putting nominal dollars towards maintaining them versus building dozens of giant stadiums from scratch every four years.
ReplyDeleteGood idea. Qatar will certainly not need eight stadiums after The World Cup!
DeleteWell, this is a controversy of which I was completely unaware. I don't think I need any more controversies in my life!
ReplyDeleteSurprising that this had all passed you by Steve.
DeletePresumably another case of money talks, but in this case who apart from Blatter got the money? Interesting to see the squirming of the oh-so-woke advertisers trying to square their sponsorship with Qatar human rights record.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of hypocrisy around and I guess that I could also be accused of hypocrisy just because I intend to watch a number of matches.
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