This kind of shit has been happening for years unfortunately, the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar is just (arguably) the most high-profile, and therefore brazen, example. Read David Yallop’s compelling 1999 book ‘How They Stole the Game’ for proof, particularly the part detailing how and why the 1986 World Cup was switched to Mexico from Colombia (I was always under the impression that it was because of an earthquake, turns out there may have been a lot more to it than that), or the bit about every Argentine journalist getting up and walking out of a press conference during that same World Cup after President Havelange invited along one of the Generals who had ruled so brutally in their country, yet who had nonetheless been allowed to retain the mandate to host the 1978 competition despite widespread human rights concerns internationally. FIFA stays out of politics, though. Damn right they do, especially when it suits them to see no evil and hear none either. They own the World Cup, a fact that they’re happy to rub our noses in every chance they get, and the reality is that they can do whatever they want with it and for whatever reason.
The Mexico ’86 example above is, however, proof that they can move tournaments if they want to, which begs the question why they’re forcing the lunacy of rearranging the football calendar to suit their choice. They’ll do it simply because they can. No offence to the country itself, but the choice of Qatar stinks, in fact it’s almost like Blatter and a few of his cronies were sitting around one night, maybe smoking cigars, playing poker and drinking whiskey, trying to think up of just how far they could push the envelope and how much they could get away with, Blatter perhaps reminiscing fondly about his idea to make the goals bigger or make female players wear skirts or move to quarters instead of halves and bitterly bemoaning how awesome it all would have been, when one of them came up with the idea of awarding the World Cup to a country with dangerous heat during the summer months and virtually no stadiums. It’s almost as if they were trying to troll the world and, if you think about it, they kind of are. There is simply no logical, good reason for Qatar to be awarded this competition ahead of bids from Japan, South Korea and the United States (who have all successfully hosted the competition in the past) and Australia (which would appear to have the perfect infrastructure for it), certainly not the typically empty rhetoric of spreading the game’s reach worldwide (Ireland has never hosted a World Cup but I’m pretty certain of the game’s popularity here).
The only solution is to hurt them in the only way they understand, their pocket, and in my view, the only way to do that is for the footballers themselves to say ‘enough’. FIFA know that they’ll always get huge numbers of viewers worldwide, that will never change, but the product they sell to their sponsors can and that’s defined by the players. It may not be Messi and Ronaldo in 2022, but you can be sure that there will be a new generation of larger-than-life superstars (not mere footballers, you understand) created by the advertisers and marketing men by then, and these are what the ‘FIFA Family’ really cares about. It’s simply unrealistic to expect the entire world to turn off en masse because the competition is being held in a particular place, but all it would take is for a few high profile players to say no and stay at home to sour the milk a little bit (just a little bit) for sponsors and maybe give FIFA a reason to change, because once those profits (which seem to have been breaking records every four years for as long as I can remember) go down, then that’s the only time we might see a corrective reaction. The truth is that, right now, they’ve got no reason to change, so they won’t. Sadly, the scenario outlined above is unlikely to happen because it’s a hell of an ask to expect players to give up what could be their only chance to play in a World Cup, along with the associated earnings boost that its profile can give them whether through a lucrative transfer or sponsorships, not to mention potentially standing alone, no doubt facing criticism from their own supporters for not going and with every likelihood that their stand will have no effect anyway. And so the story will continue into the future, and who, genuinely, can say where we’ll end up before they're finished?
