Football has swept everything away. The magic of sport won on the fouls of boycott: it has erased everything. She made people forget human rights, she slipped the environmental question under the carpet, given to the Greek calendars the conditions for the allocation of “the” cut to Qatar and those of the construction of the stadiums. The miracle of football has been there, collective madness around a leather ball.
Qatar-less than half a million nationals sitting on a natural gas ocean-has managed a quasi-past. The emirate has taken risks. For months, the European press has stopped the 2022 Cup, pulling penalty penalty. Qatar was a bad choice – with regard to the football past of this country, rather lean, and the weather that reigns, quite dissuasive. Who knows if the current judicial investigation in Brussels, for suspicions of corruption in the European Parliament, will not also exchange the image of Doha. The British daily The Guardian said, in September, that more than 6,000 immigrant workers – mainly Nepalese, Bengladais and Pakistanis – died by building stadiums (the Qataris speak of 400 to 500 fatal accidents). The most followed sports event in the world was badly gone.
At the time of the semi-finals, Qatar has achieved its goal. The cup went well, at least until then. The Emirate sees its regional status enhanced. TV audiences and advertisements were there. The Emir of Qatar, Cheikh Tamim Ben Hamad Al Thani, had invested in football knowingly: sport is influence, the weapon of the very rich but small emerging to weigh more and shine in the world. In short, to exist outside hydrocarbons.
minority prevention
Who complains about the ban on alcohol in stadiums? Who protested against the ban on European champions to wear an LGBT brasard on the arm? Western prevention remained Western. In a “global” audience, the reserves expressed by Europeans have remained in the minority. The human rights situation in this monarchy little influenced by the Scandinavian model? Shameless merchant with many dictatorships, Europeans probably lacked arguments to counter this one: we like and play football under all diets.
Convinced internationalist and an expert observer of the world football scene, Simon Kuper, of the Financial Times, feared that the climate of ultra -nationalism of the time would detect on the 2022 Cup. “Civilizations have perfectly cohabited,” he wrote in the publishing of December 10-11 of the newspaper.
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