This article has been written and published at the very last minute because even whilst writing it, I was unsure if my convictions would actually match my actions when it comes to watching the World Cup. However, I am committed, at this point at least, to boycotting the 2022 World Cup. The true purpose of this article, even now, remains a mystery to me. Is this a last-minute piece hoping to inspire a widespread boycott? Is this merely an opinion piece regarding the World Cup? Is this a transcription of an internal monologue or even one of the internal dialogues I have with myself on the way to work? I am not sure: it is probably a mix of all three. Whatever the article’s motivation, this is why I have arrived at the decision not to watch the World Cup and why I feel there has been an abject failure on the part of the fans, players, organisers and sponsors that there has been no organised boycott.

The goal of sportswashing is to change the perception of the host nation from a poor to a positive one, as the host country is absolved of accountability for their human rights abuses through high-quality sporting action and excellent hospitality. Qatar is also evidently seeking to impose itself as a major player in international relations. This event will even work as a means for the host country to absolve themselves of the crimes committed in the building of the tournament itself. 

Qatar has spent an estimated $220 billion on these efforts, making it the most expensive World Cup in history. Despite this, there is little interest in football in Qatar and no space for the fast-growing women’s game. Qatar will be enshrined in football history, particularly with the opportunity for the coronation of Messi as the greatest player ever. A small country with such minimal football history playing host to the greatest sporting event in the world is a clear example of cultural imperialism and a symbol of the power of the pound in football.

Of course we should use sporting events to call attention to legitimate causes and poor human rights records in other countries which have been bestowed the honour of world cup hosts. This is undeniably true. But rarely have we seen a tournament where the very creation of the games has caused such devastation to the country’s inhabitants, with some reports estimating 6,500 deaths as a result of the preparation for the event.  The Qatari aim of using the World Cup to cleanse the country’s image is unprecedented in that it has been the goal of the Qatari bid from the outset. Even the two most notable examples of sportswashing, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the 1978 World Cup, were both handed to these nations before the rise to power of the Nazi Party in 1933 and the military junta coup d’etat of 1976. 

6,500 migrant workers have died during the building of this World Cup: literally worked to death to make this world cup possible. Up to 1.5 million migrant workers have been used to build this world cup, with South East Asia, in particular, contributing large portions of this number. These migrant workers have made their way to Qatar to work and earn money to send back to their families, but instead have been held hostage and forced to work while employers keep their passports and refuse them the ability to change employment. This is modern-day state-organised slavery. 

Some will claim the abolition of the kafala system as progress, which has both raised the minimum wage and means that workers can now freely move to other jobs without the permission of their employers. Despite this, low earners can still earn as little as £1 an hour. The Guardian has reported this week that security guards at the world cup are still being paid just 35p an hour with only one day off a month. It is evident that the abolition of the kafala system was merely appeasement of Western liberal media, not genuine or radical change. 

With all of this in mind, what is the purpose of a boycott? The goal of boycotting an international sporting event is to damage the host country, predominantly through economic loss and reputational damage, to force governmental or regime change. But with no widespread protest movement against this World Cup, it feels impossible for fans to use collective power to force any change. Instrumentally the value of a ‘one-man’ boycott is unclear. Without the economic and reputational damage necessary to force genuinely revolutionary change to workers’ rights in Qatar, what is the point? 

But this does not reduce the intrinsic value of it as a boycott. This is in the same ilk as boycotting last year’s Eurovision or products you know come from Israel. It is a clear statement that Qatari’s employment of modern-day slavery to cover up their human rights abuses, homophobic and misogynistic laws and impose themselves into international politics is not acceptable, nor what we, as football fans, should want the world game to look like or be used for. 

And this is not just about the politics of the Qatari state; this is about the politics of football. This is about what we, as football fans, want the game to represent. Increasingly, with projects like the scrapped Super League, football is being used as a tool of major international corporations and states to rake in billions of dollars of profit or to wash away their abject human rights records. Instead of representing working people and the shared culture we have created across the past 150 years of playing football, it is nothing more than a selling point to benefit a few wealthy elites. Standing against the trends that underpin this world cup is part of a broader goal of fans reclaiming the sport from FIFA’s corrupt bureaucracy. The corporatocracy is real. FIFA is a business, and nothing else, selling the beautiful game for profit and endorsing state-organised slavery for the private gain of a few.

Hosting a world cup is not a right. Questions have been raised about the South African World Cup bid. Perhaps this set an unhealthy precedent for corruption but was it not correct to take the World Cup to a country that had ended apartheid and sought to highlight the significant change in South African society? Is FIFA not rewarding Qatar for upholding homosexuality as a crime? The honour and prestige that comes with a World Cup have been bestowed upon Qatar, despite their working of over 6,500 migrant workers to death. By attending, journalists and fans alike will have allowed Qatar to scrub its image clean. The chance for solidarity and resistance will have passed.

After accepting a punditry job for the World Cup, one of England’s most outspoken football figures Gary Neville, has defended the decision to go, arguing that the route to force change is going to the tournament and highlighting the issues. The lack of logic here is astounding. How much can Neville, a man helping to cleanse the Qatari image through his engagement with the state institutions, really reveal or change through vague statements and whitewashed interviews and a documentary? 

Historically there is no evidence that individuals or states have made a difference in their attendance at such events. These issues are never adequately highlighted but kept under lock and key in resistance to change. Following Berlin 1936 Hitler and Germany started a second World War and committed genocide. Russia was still four years away from invading Ukraine when it hosted the World Cup in 2018. Did the 1978 world cup in Argentina actually do anything to raise awareness or stop the dirty war the junta was fighting against its own people or was it their own deepening of the economic crisis and loss of the Falklands War that led to this downfall? These tournaments not only present these countries as hospitable world powers but through hosting the best athletes in the world to compete in a sport/entertainment extravaganza, the questionable human rights records of these countries are buried. The lines between image and reality become blurred, allowing the scope of such state-sponsored human rights neglect to widen.

The implication from multiple footballers that it is not up to players where the tournament takes place appears merely as a weak statement with only the goal of sidestepping the issue. While no player has the power to just remove the holding rights from Qatar, no player is forced to play. There is a genuine lack of willingness from players to engage in real action to change footballing governance. Players can decide not to play for their international countries: there is no binding contract to play. It remains to be seen if we will see any public acts of protest during this World Cup, apart from the token gesture of rainbow-coloured armbands.

The World Cup is like any other sports tournament in that its prestige is bestowed upon it by the fans and players through the value that they place on it. By watching this World Cup, we are granting legitimacy to this tournament and en masse people are deciding to watch it. The success of the Qatar World Cup and the state’s subsequent aims will result if we infer value and legitimacy by engaging with it. 

The World Cup will, of course, be very entertaining, as it produces the usual supply of thrills and tense moments. The intrigue and unpredictability are particular features of this World Cup as the first tournament since 2006 without a clear favourite. We cannot retroactively retract the value of the World Cup once it has happened and cannot deny the legitimacy of the tournament whilst simultaneously watching every game. As football fans and players, we are placing higher importance on our experience of the joys of the World Cup over the lives of migrant workers. We are actively not holding the Qatari monarchy to account for their crimes or genuinely seeking to improve the living standards for migrant workers.

While I do believe that someone can watch this tournament and feel anger towards the despicable crimes that occurred in the building of this tournament, I cannot also deny the fact that watching this tournament is implicitly accepting and agreeing to the sportswashing of this tournament. The World Cup may be the greatest football tournament in the world, but it is only so because of the fans watching it. We have willingly ignored genuine human suffering in the search for iconic football moments. To watch any of the games at this year’s World Cup is to willingly subject yourself to some reverse Ludovico technique, whereby you strap yourself in and place the pincers between your eyelids, viewing this tournament to the point of equating quality Qatari hospitality, culture and generosity with brilliant football memories and not modern-day slavery, homophobia, misogyny, classism and cultural imperialism. 

Qatar is inviting the world’s best players to dance on the graves of those who made this tournament. If you want to watch the tournament, then watch, but know that simply remembering the crimes is not enough. At a minimum, there has to be some widespread recognition of our implicit agreement to allow Qatar to ‘sportswash’ its image. Qatar will have already hosted a World Cup that was watched worldwide. The world will leave Qatar on December 18^th and with it they will take the power to improve the working conditions for migrant workers in Qatar. In a state of nearly 3 million people, where only 300,000 are citizens, and the rest of the population are migrant workers, where there are no political parties, it is incredibly unlikely we will see genuine change to workers’ rights when there is no incentive to do so. The incentive should have been the World Cup. Keep this in mind while you watch. 

https://campaigns.allout.org/qatar2022

by Shay Pomeroy

Edited by Annie Hackett