--:-- Noelle King: Five billion-ish people will watch the FIFA World Cup later this month, more than half of the population of earth. The pocket-sized Gulf nation of Qatar will host. Countries compete fiercely for the right to host the World Cup, and when Qatar won, it was a win for the soccer-obsessed Arab world. But then came the allegations. Had Qatar cheated? If you sort me out, hook me up for 2018, we will work behind the scenes to help you in 2022. Scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, and let's come up with a deal. Or is this a case of a country unfairly accused of corruption when everyone involved is on some level pretty corrupt? Coming up on Today Explained.
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--:-- Noelle King: Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's BetterHelp.com slash explained.
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. This is the first time ever that the World Cup is being held in an Arab country. And that is exciting, full stop, because as we're going to hear, the evolution of soccer in the Arab world in some ways is the evolution of the Arab world, from colonialism to revolution. Abdullah El-Aryan is a professor of Middle East history at Georgetown University in Qatar. It's like a franchise situation. He edited a book called Football in the Middle East, State, Society, and the Beautiful Game.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: Abdullah, let's start with the good stuff. What's it like in Doha now? What has the city gotten? A lot of new buildings, new roads, a metro system that wasn't here just a few years ago. It debuted in 2019. 110 cars will make up to 700,000 trips each day. A new airport. So there's the physical transformation of the city. The primary artery for cars will be transformed into a pedestrian-only entertainment district for an estimated 1.2 million fans. There's new parts of the city, entire neighborhood sections that have just sort of come up out of nowhere just in the last kind of five or six years or so.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: You know, a lot of the massive billboards and the faces of all of the like world football's biggest stars sprawling all over skyscrapers and things like that. And of course, everywhere you look, there's a new stadium that has popped up. A stadium designed to reflect the nomadic culture of the region. The design of the stadium resembled the Bedouin 10 Betishara, which is the welcome sign back in the days. They built seven stadiums, an eighth was refurbished. But all of the games, the 64 matches will be held within these eight stadiums.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: Give me a sense of how important soccer is to the Middle East. You know, the game is definitely the most popular sport anywhere in this region. You see entire cities kind of turn out for their major club matches. You can hear a pin drop whenever the national teams are playing, whether it's in Egypt or Algeria or Morocco, because everyone is sort of tuned in, whether in their radios, in the cafes, or even those who are attending the matches in stadiums.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: So there's a real passion in a sense that the national teams tend to be kind of really representative of the entire country in a way that you could even argue is more representative of the population and of the society than sometimes their own political leaders are. The game was introduced really through the colonial experience. Most of the countries in the Middle East were at one point or another colonized by either Britain or France.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: And so it was during the course of that colonial experience that you see colonial officials introducing new educational curriculums, trying to modernize the population. Part of that included things like physical education that they believed was important to develop what they called properly obedient individuals. And so this meant kind of introducing the game as kind of, you know, a very structured game with a set of rules.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: For ball control is essential to skillful play. That required a certain kind of discipline and that this was ultimately going to kind of educate them into a sort of Western way of thinking and acting. And so this was the way that they tried to kind of groom and cultivate the elites within the societies that they conquered. And through games like heading tennis, keeping the boys interested in learning the right way of bringing the head into contact with the ball.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: But of course, the game, like most things when it comes to popular culture, has the tendency to take on a life of its own. And all of a sudden it becomes a source of empowerment for populations against colonial rule. Against colonial rule and then later against authoritarian rule, right? So, I lived in Cairo during the Arab Spring and I'd cover these massive protests. And I knew to look out for the ultras, the super fans of these big teams like Ahli and Zmalik, because they were an organized contingent.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: They seemed to be leading things. And for an American journalist, it was like, I cannot imagine, you know, Jets fans doing this. We talking about authoritarian contexts especially in places like Egypt and Algeria and Syria and elsewhere where you don't see the opportunity for people to simply found a political party or to simply go and kind of organize explicitly on a political basis.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: The Cairo derby is the biggest fixture in the Middle East's football calendar. A bitter rivalry between Africa's two most successful teams, Akhli and Zemalek. And so what we tend to see more of is a kind of an alternative politics, which means people within society are likely to gather through things that might seem innocuous from the perspective of the regime.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: This is politics. Zamanic is the government. You know, well, you're not going to really prevent people from gathering in stadiums or coffee houses or, you know, hookah lounges where they're going to sit and watch matches and support their favorite clubs. And at the same time, that then becomes an opportunity by which people do ultimately, naturally engage in political discussion.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: The people's ideas, ethics, strategies, plans, didn't contradict with the idea of revolution. They are actually the same. And so the idea that football fan groups were a part of the kind of the collective of people who mobilized in these mass protests in places like, you know, Tahrir Square or even in Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain, for instance, or in Yemen or in Syria or Libya or Algeria.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: These groups tended to already have that kind of sense of camaraderie, having already fought off security forces when they were confronting the police in stadiums. So when there was this assault by the security forces in a number of these places, we end up seeing that it's actually the football ultra groups that tend to kind of stand firm in defense of the protesters in Tahrir Square.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: And I think that also then helped encourage the broader movements that were protesting and mobilizing in those days, be able to stand firm. And so we saw quite an effective resistance to a lot of the typical crackdowns that we saw on the part of the state.
--:-- Noelle King: Okay. So you have this combination of beautiful game, extraordinary history of protest. But Abdullah, let me ask you now about the criticism of Qatar, because investigative reporting suggests that many migrant workers died while building these stadiums and all of this other infrastructure that you guys have gotten. Qatar's amir, its leader, says essentially, the rest of the world is picking on us because we're a little Arab country.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: I happen to think that a lot of the questions that have been raised around the way that the Qatar World Cup has come together are incredibly valid. And they're serious questions that need to be taken on without sort of any kind of equivocating. But I don't think it's been helpful that so much of these critiques relied on very borderline orientalist kind of narratives of just creating an exceptional situation that Qatar occupies without actually taking on the kind of the much deeper, serious issues having to do with things like the global flow of labor and capital and all of the various parties that are implicated.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: To just simply say, you know, this is just something that, you know, is just a product of a certain culture or a certain kind of specific environment, as opposed to kind of thinking about all of these different forces that have converged to create the kind of conditions that exist. The conditions that exist include one that has made things very awkward for Qatar.
--:-- Noelle King: On the face of it, there is no staggeringly obvious reason for Qatar to have won the right to host the World Cup. It's smaller in size than Connecticut. It needed to build a plethora of stadiums. It's built a new railway network. Everything needed to be built from scratch. And no less an authority than the U.S. Department of Justice says that in the process of competing to host the World Cup, Qatar did some bribing. And FIFA was all too happy to accept.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: It's coming up. Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more. Your home isn't just where you sleep, it's your community, and Bilt wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Bilt members every month. When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Abdullah El-Aryan: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained. Today Explained World Cup edition.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Yeah, I'm Tarek Pandra. I'm a global sports correspondent with The New York Times. A lot of that actually features the sort of byways and highways and the behind-the-scenes ways of the world of sport, notably football.
--:-- Noelle King: What is FIFA exactly?
--:-- Tarek Pandra: FIFA is essentially the global governing body for the world's most popular sport. It is based in Zurich and it is composed of 211 member nations. In a sense it has more members than the United Nations.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Today, football is a global game. At FIFA, it's our responsibility to develop the game for future generations and to protect its integrity. But that also means never forgetting the principles on which we were founded.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: FIFA hosts the World Cup every four years and about seven or eight years before a tournament begins, there is a jockeying for hosting this because there is nothing bigger in the world, perhaps say the Olympic Games than the Football World Cup.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: And FIFA starts a bidding competition, which lasts between 18 months and two years, typically for each World Cup, and now is voted on by a representative of each of its 211 members at the Congress. For Qatar, this wasn't the case. This was done by a group called the FIFA Executive Committee, a high-powered band of men, and they were all men.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Say I'm a country, I would really like to host the World Cup, and I want to do everything above board. What do I typically do? How do I typically approach FIFA?
--:-- Noelle King: You typically won't get the World Cup if you try and do everything above board. No, Tarek. Okay, let's phrase that slightly differently. What do countries that really want to host the World Cup typically do? with the understanding that it can't be done above board. Right.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: So on the face of it, there is a bid committee that is formed. We are just moments away from the big decision in Zurich, Switzerland, where football's ruling body will announce who will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Lots of nice video packages, celebrity endorsements, trips to your country for the FIFA executive class. What will it mean to the region if the world's greatest sporting event comes to the Middle East for the very first time?
--:-- Tarek Pandra: You are really trying to curry favor with this group of important people that they may bestow their votes upon you. So you create a bid. It is a challenge. It's always a challenge to host a World Cup, but I think that we're definitely up to that challenge.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: And towards the end, there will be a bid book, which is a multi-multi-page book, which will feature all the guarantees that FIFA requires, from security to hotel accommodation, to what type of stadiums you have, transport, etc. and you would say our offering is better than everyone else's and guess what we can also generate billions of dollars in revenue for you and here's how.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Unfortunately I don't think most of the voters will ever read these books because they in the past haven't it's other things that have tended to sway their votes as I said previously it was a small group of people you had to curry favor with.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: So in a sense, it was finding out what the quirks and peccadilloes of each particular voter might be, and how you might be able to influence them. In many cases, that has turned out to be cold, hard cash. Cash is a good quirk, and it's a good peccadillo.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: It's 2022. So the lobbying started, by your math, somewhere around 2014, 2015. Well, in this case, it was a very strange process. Oh, what happened? Because Qatar actually started lobbying for the World Cup in, I believe, 2009.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Because FIFA, in its wisdom at the time, decided to offer two World Cups in the same vote. It is an honor and a privilege to welcome you all to Zurich for the 2018 and the 2022 FIFA World Cup host announcement.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: So the 2018 World Cup that went to Russia and the 2022 World Cup. The winner to organize the 2022 FIFA World Cup is Qatar. That created conditions ripe for even more skullduggery than had been the norm before.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: It allowed different nations to collude with each other to create behind the scenes deals. If you sort me out, hook me up for 2018, we will work behind the scenes to help you in 2022. Scratch my back, I'll scratch yours and let's come up with a deal.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: All of this, on the face of it, based on FIFA's rules and regulations at the time, and yes, they had rules and regulations, ethics rules, flew in the face of those. But all of this was taking place.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: And so what do we know ultimately about why Qatar was chosen? Its bid was the most extravagant at the time. So it spent publicly almost 200 million on bidding, far more than everyone else.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: That meant sponsoring conventions in Africa where voters were hiring ambassadors like Zinedine Zidane, the France soccer legend, among others, for huge fees. So Qatar on that level was very visible.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Thank you for believing in expanding the game. Thank you for giving Qatar a chance. and we will not let you down. You will be proud of us. You will be proud of the Middle East, and I promise you this.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Then it gets a little bit darker, I guess. What prompted these guys to choose Qatar which among the bidders the United States of America Australia Korea and Japan for 2022 Among that group, it was clearly the most unsuitable offer in a sense from an infrastructure point of view.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: It needed to pretty much rebuild or build an entire country to host this tournament. I mean, let's not forget it's smaller in size than Connecticut, smaller than any previous World Cup host. It needed to build a plethora of stadiums.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: It's built a new railway network, roads, hotels. Everything needed to be built from scratch. So it's very, very difficult to understand, you know, in a sense of reality in a way, why these guys would choose Qatar.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: And then the only kind of open question is what persuaded them to do it? And since then, there's been several investigations, media reports, you name it, about corruption within FIFA.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: The Department of Justice in the US, part of a broader investigation into soccer corruption, in an indictment said three members and named them these three South Americans, had taken money to vote for Qatar. It doesn't say, though, that it was the Qataris that paid for this, and that creates this continuing gray area, this miasma around what exactly happened.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: What has Qatar said about this indictment? Have they just tried to stay out of it? Qatar has pretty much held a solid line from the day on December 2, 2010, when the former FIFA president opened the envelope to reveal it would host the World Cup, that it played by the rules and that it has absolutely nothing to feel guilty about, nothing to apologise for, and that a lot of the attacks are, in essence, anti-Arab in some way or sour grapes from those who lost.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Did FIFA make any changes after that indictment, after any of this mess? Has FIFA changed at all? Well, FIFA was forced to change. I mean, the scandal, it's hard to overplay how big and what a shocking moment it was. Even by FIFA standards, these are extraordinary developments.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: At the behest of the US Attorney General, seven senior FIFA officials arrested at the crack of dawn concerning allegations of fraud, racketeering and money laundering. That threatened FIFA's very existence. It was some of their most senior officials that were involved in this.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: They had to change. A reform committee was organized. The top leadership over the next months was removed, decapitated and replaced with new people. The reforms have meant for example the world cup is now chosen by the entire membership 211 national soccer federations and not 24 people behind closed doors the votes are made public which they were not before.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: But what I would say is culturally very little has changed. The behind-closed-door antics still exists. These highly paid sinecures for people who support the hierarchy are still well in place. And this is very much in part of how FIFA has always been run.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Qatar's emir, its leader, says his country is being unfairly criticized, unfairly singled out. Is there anything that suggests he might have a point? I guess to have that opinion at best is naive, because if you are going to want to host this, and you are hosting this, that level of scrutiny is to be expected, particularly given the circumstances around Qatar, its bid, and then its decade-long build-up to staging the event.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: The amount of building work, the cost is unprecedented. Qatar would say, well, that's not just for the World Cup, we would build this stuff anyway. But really, you know, it's a tiny place, it has to build eight stadiums in a race against time, and has involved the importation of some of the poorest people in the world to act as migrant labors.
--:-- Tarek Pandra: Then you have the issues around other human rights. Being gay is a criminal offence in Qatar. So a lot of this scrutiny surely is to be expected. Next Friday on Today Explained World Cup Edition, we're going to interview a migrant worker from Kenya who was employed in Qatar. And I promise you will not want to miss that one.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's show Edited by Amina El-Sadi, produced by Halima Shah, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard. I'm Noelle King, and it's Today Explained.
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--:-- Noelle King: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
