The Fifa World Cup is underway as the world comes together to watch and root for their teams as they attempt to bring the trophy home. However, underneath the surface of a harmless soccer tournament is a mountain of allegations and questions surrounding the Qatar government and the committee responsible for allowing Qatar to host the World Cup.
Qatar is a small Arabic country on the tip of the Arabian peninsula. Although a bit unknown by the general public, it is home to nearly three million citizens, and is rapidly growing. Since 2000, Qatar has quadrupled its population.
The Qatar national team goes into the world cup as underdogs, with only a few countries having worse odds to win according to NBC Sports. They are primed to be the second world cup host team to not make it past the group stages, and the first to not win a single game.
The controversy has been around for twelve years, ever since it was announced that they would host. Immediately, people from all over the globe accused the Qatar government of bribery and corruption among the FIFA officials who voted for Qatar to host.
The first thing brought to mind was the logistics of a country hosting a summer event where it commonly tops 100 degrees on the summer days. This concern was ultimately fixed by moving the World Cup to late November and December, the first time it has ever been this late. Despite this issue being fixed, leaders from around the world wouldn’t stop arguing that the country should be stripped of the rights to hold the World Cup. In a recent interview, the former head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, even admitted to Qatar hosting being a mistake. Saying that “It was a bad choice. And I was responsible for that at the time.”
More recently, reports of human rights violations, and the overworking of builders added more flame to the fire against Qatar. They only had one stadium fit for a world cup at the time, so they needed to build 3-4 more stadiums in the matter of 10 years. This resulted in thousands of lost lives after being overworked and put into horrible working conditions.
Outside of illegal allegations, Qatar has supposedly paid their own citizens to dress up as fans and go to the games. Qatar has an incredibly low number of foreign ticket prices, due to the controversies, and suspicious blackouts of ticket websites.
The 2026 world cup will take place in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, which is sure to bring many more fans than the scandalous, allegation-filled tournament taking place in Qatar this November and December. So I will leave it up for you to decide, should Qatar have hosted the World Cup, or should it have been moved somewhere else?