By: Hadebe Hadebe
The 2022 edition of the FIFA World Cup begins today in small Qatar against controversies ranging from lack of human rights to scandals. A new Netflix documentary film FIFA Uncovered exposes how the tiny Middle Eastern country won the right to host the tournament. Sepp Blatter, who was at the helm of FIFA during the awarding of the rights, reportedly told a Swiss newspaper that giving the largest football tournament to a tiny country was a mistake.
Western nations have campaigned very hard against the Qatari tournament. They have used every ammunition to discredit and discourage football lovers. One would swear that human rights abuses are manufactured and patented in Doha. Every little scandal is featured as the main story in European media. As things stand, there are suddenly complaints about the country’s strict laws on booze and booty as if no one knew about them yesterday.
But the games will begin unusually in the middle of the European winter and in a place that is not known for football. Qatar is riding a wave of success, controversy and cheekiness.
Late Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, Edward Wadie Said, would witness his book Orientalism playing out in real life as the Qataris defend themselves from a barrage of attacks. James Montague, author of ‘When Friday Comes: Football Revolution in the Middle East and the road to Qatar’, argues that the Qataris dismiss everything against them as racism, orientalism, a conspiracy!
Even FIFA president Gianni Infantino appears to side with the Qataris after he declared that he had difficulties understanding the criticism. He said, “We have been taught many lessons from Europeans and the Western world. I am European. For what we have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before giving moral lessons.”
The one-sided criticism hides an exciting story about football in Qatar. Not many people are even aware that the national team – The Maroons – are the reigning Asian champions after defeating Japan 3 to 1 in 2019. Although the focus is on traditional names like Brazil, Argentina and Germany, the Qataris are the surprise package at the World Cup.
Of course, everything about the FIFA 2022 World Cup is about the Qatari fairy tale: expensively built cooled stadiums and alcohol-free matches will be among the features of the tournament. Also, women will officiate at a men’s World Cup for the first time in Qatar. The games will play in the European winter and the middle of the football season.
The cost of hosting the tournament in a country that did not have the infrastructure is reportedly around U$D220 billion. Recent hosts Brazil (2014) and Russia (2018) spent U$D11.5 billion and U$D14 billion, respectively. With a population of less than 3 million and just 313,000 of them Qatari citizens, the country of fewer than 7,500 registered footballers.
However, its influence on football will last for the longest time. Besides owning PSG in France, the Qatari spiderweb extends to SC Braga in Portugal, but the story does not end there. Then steps in the Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF), which owns the world-class football academy in the world, Aspire. The AZF owns K.A.S. Eupen (Belgium) and Cultural y Deportiva Leonesa (Spain), as well as maintains technical and other types of partnerships with Leeds United and many clubs worldwide.
The Aspire Academy is at the heart of everything and aspires Qatar to reach greater heights in sports since it was set up in 2004. While the UAE has moved to attract the world’s business clientele, Qatar has taken quite a unique step and has looked to improve its name by becoming a centre for sporting excellence.
Strangely, the Aspire Academy adverts have been featured on international media for many years, but no one has ever accused Qatar of human rights violations and child trafficking. Argentine star and former Barcelona player, who now plies his trade at PSG, has a long association with the Aspire Academy. It is no coincidence that he went to the Parisian club after Barcelona.
Now led by former Australian international Tim Cahill, the academy provides a unique model for growing and managing national teams. Following its admission to Super Rugby in 2016, Argentinian rugby club Jaguares was criticised for loading their team with Pumas internationals.
According to Cahill, “70 per cent of the squad that won the Asian Cup was developed at the Aspire Academy. All members of the under-19 team, which won the 2014 AFC under-19 Championship, are from here.” Goalkeeper Saad al-Sheeb, former Asian player of the year Akram Afif and top scorer Almoez Ali had been trained at Aspire.
Contrary to popular belief, most players were born in Qatar, which is surprising since the country has some of the most stringent naturalisation laws around. Akram Afif has a Yemeni mother and a Tanzanian father, but he was born in Doha. He is like many socio-economic citizens in world football, like Samuel Mtiti (Cameroon) and Lukas Podolski (Poland), who went on to play for their adopted countries, France and Germany.
Qatar’s model of home-grown stars was helped by a much-publicised incident in 2004 when it tried to naturalise three Brazilian players (Ailton, Dede and Leandro) — none of whom had any previous connection to the country — in the space of a week. A move that was immediately blocked by FIFA, which promised to tighten its rules for naturalised players.
For the past two decades, Aspire and its Football Dreams scouting project “have overseen perhaps the largest single scouting mission in world football”. The Financial Times claims that Football Dreams screened more than 3.5 million children between 2007-2014. In 2010, for instance, only 5% of the team was born in Qatar, but the figure will come close to 90% at the World Cup.
Not only that, but the talent-development project is reaping results as Qatari football punches above its weight. In a short space, Qatar has already won the 2014 AFC under-19 Championship and the Asian Cup in 2019. According to Christos Anagnostopoulos, professor of sport management at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, “They had a vision and they had a specific plan for how to get closer to that vision.”
Admittedly, the issue of full citizenship remains contentious in Qatar as it has yet to be known how many players have it. Only fifty foreigners can be naturalised annually through a decree by the Emir. Many Aspire graduates play on a temporary “mission passport” besides living in the country for most of their lives,
The Asian Cup-winning squad were promised permanent citizenship, but there is no confirmation whether they were granted. A player like star striker Almoez Ali was born in Sudan and was raised in Qatar from a young age. Only three players in the current squad were naturalised as adults.
As the rumour mill moves to top gear, Qatar is accused of having mercenaries and no Qataris playing for them. Detractors cannot stomach that Qatar has the best football academy and boasts of owning a club with stars like Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Messi in its ranks. Mind you, Aspire graduates have gone on to play for Barcelona and Everton.
Like Manchester City’s rags-to-riches story, K.A.S. Eupen are now mainstays in European football, although they have only ever spent one season in the Belgian top division. Six of Qatar’s World Cup squad have previously spent time with Eupen. The Academy enjoys cordial relations with Bayern Munich, PSV Eindhoven, Club Brugge, Manchester United and Red Bull Salzburg. European hypocrisy is startling.
Overall, Qatar has successfully used Aspire to build one of the strongest teams in a generation. It has moved from being one of the lowest-ranked teams in Asia to being Asian champions. Qatar ranks above Ghana and Saudi Arabia in the current tournament.
Qatar is expected to follow in South Africa’s dreaded footsteps when they became the first-ever hosts to be knocked out in the group stages. After their continental exploits, the experienced Qatari side could spring a surprise in a group comprising the Sadio Mane-less Senegal, Ecuador and the Netherlands.
