Asian Nations’ Cup Attendances Show Qatari World Cup Farce For What It Likely Was

Not a second had gone by before the consternation of FIFA’s decision in December to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar began.  Almost immediately charges of bribery and payoffs were levied at FIFA officials, such as FIFA president (& World’s #1 footballer) Sepp Blatter, and the Qatari delegate which was led in part by the ruling al-Thani family and their countries’ vast wealth from their massive oil & natural gas reserves.   

To be fair, FIFA has a history of awarding World Cups to controversial countries such as: Italy ’34, during the reign of Mussolini & the Fascists; Argentina ’78 during the reign of their military junta; & USA ’94, a non-footballing nation.  However, Blatter did not help matters when he revealed almost immediately following the decision that FIFA had decided to take the World Cup to places it hadn’t been before with both bid awards (Russia in 2018 & Qatar in 2022).  Never mind that if that was the case then FIFA’s selection committee should’veinformed nations such as England & the United States beforehand, so they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of putting together a bid & spending millions of dollars (then again, FIFA cronies wouldn’t have enjoyed lavish scouting & fact-finding trips, would they?) but now Qatar has to deal with the potential  that their seemingly hyperbolic claims of filling large, state-of-the-art stadiums (some of which aren’t even built yet) isn’t being borne out by Asia’s top tournament, the Asia Nations’ Cup, where attendance for many matches have been ridiculously low.   

Tickets to matches have already been offered at cut-rates even though Qataris enjoy the second highest per capita income in the entire world behind Luxembourg (due to the aforementioned oil & gas industry & no income tax) according to the IMF’s 2006 report.  However, match attendances have still averaged under 10,000 with some attendances being as low as under 3,000.

To be fair, the Asian Cup is not the World Cup & attendances should rise just on that fact alone.  However, it raises legitimate questions about the host country when the premier tournament of a continent contests matches in stadiums that are less than 10% full.

Last summer’s World Cup in South Africa already has dealt with much less than expected attendances in opening round games & that was in a country where you could drink alcohol.  In Qatar, one of the many questions organizers will have to deal with is what to do with football supporters who want a frosty beverage even if they do show up.  Not serving alcohol isn’t really an incentive to go to a country to watch a football match in 115 degree heat (though the country has said they’ll designate ‘fan zones’ where alcohol consumption will be permitted) but the country is still a fairly strict Islamic state with a questionable human rights’ record that may lead to some tense situations for traveling supporters.  Oops, but the outside world isn’t supposed to know things like that.  Or know things like legal immigrant laborers are often paid far less than promised & many are forced into what amounts to indentured service.    

But hey, FIFA, that bastion of ethics they are, has set out to bring the World Cup to places it hasn’t gone before (who coincidentally both happen to be awash with oil money & the countries’ leaders are either politically connected to [Russia] or inseparable from [Qatar] their bidding committees) & at least Qatar has promised to allow Israel to compete in the 2022 World Cup if they were to qualify despite Qatar, like the rest of the Arab & Islamic world, not recognizing Israel.  Which is fantastic, since they don’t have that authority anyway, FIFA does.  But peg me as skeptical & thinking that that is possibly one more claim Qatar will possibly fail to meet if it were to happen.  Oh yes, I went there!

Obviously, there’s 10 years for Qatar to get things in order but I doubt certain things can be fixed (such as the claims of special carbon-neutral, massive air-conditioning project stadiums completed as advertised) but the 2022 World Cup has the potential to be a very poor one if the current Asia Nations’ Cup is any indicator to go by, though granted the current tournament is being held in the middle of the European football calender when most nations’ attention, even Asian ones, are on Europe.  But who, if any, in FIFA will take the blame if such a debacle of a World Cup were to occur?

It’s been often said that money can’t buy you happiness, but for Qatar, it seems to have bought them a World Cup & soon possibly one of the world’s biggest clubs if rumors are to be believed.  Qatar, like many Middle Eastern nations with seemingly endless sources of revenue from their natural oil & gas reserves often display the big-spending & lavish, peacockish behavior of a nouveau riche.  Their recent dealings in the footballing world have certainly brought up new debates about Qatar (& the World Cup’s purpose in general, really), which has been up to now traditionally limited to CNN’s almost comical “QA-tar”/”QAT-ar”/”GUT-ar” pronunciation dispute.  If the World Cup will henceforth be awarded on such ostensibly altruistic purposes then nations should be told as much before the bidding process starts & they waste resources.  Otherwise, in the end it makes it look like FIFA is nothing more than selling out to the highest bidders despite whatever excuses they give for the voting process.