Soccer's premier event is rife with ethical conflicts, and it's being held at the busiest part of the sports calendar
teams, with 1.2 million fans converging on the host nation, with an estimated global television audience of 5 billion, with $200 billion in infrastructure projects, with seven new stadiums, a new airport, a new driverless metro system, new highways, 100 new hotels.Part of that is the timing.
But late November? In the United States, there is no busier time on the sports calendar. NFL teams are battling for playoff spots. College football has conference championships and bowl games. The NBA and NHL are a month into their seasons. College basketball has started . High school sports are in full swing.
“For me, it is clear: Qatar is a mistake,” Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president when the 2022 World Cup host was selected, said last week. “The choice is bad … It’s too small a country. Football and the World Cup are too big for that.” “You know,” Blatter once said, “it’s easy to control football when it is played on the field, because you have a referee, you have a time limit and you have boundaries. But outside the field of play, you have no referee, you have no time limit and you have no boundaries.”
Qatar, like other oil-rich nations in the Gulf, adopted the system of kafala, a sort of indentured servitude that preys on Asia’s vast economic inequities. Construction companies recruit migrant workers from Nepal or Bangladesh or Sir Lanka, where people live on as little as $5 per day, and bring them to the Gulf to build skyscrapers, roads, metros, and now soccer stadiums. Living conditions are poor, hours are long, temperatures are north of 120 degrees, labor unions are nonexistent.
Qatar’s other miscalculation is the current global culture of heightened sensitivities to human rights abuses, whether domestic or international. What was ignored, even tolerated, in the past is no longer. Abu Dhabi and Dubai were built the same way. Qatar, World Cup host, wasn’t getting the same pass.
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