Qatar 2022 raises more questions of how to navigate modern football’s moral maze
On 2 December 2010, I was hosting an event on behalf of the England 2018 World Cup bid outside City Hall in central London. It was toe-curlingly cold. My co-host, Charlotte Jackson, and I were joined by Peter Crouch and David Ginola among others to celebrate England’s certain success – the first World Cup on home soil since ’66. We were favourites. It was a good bid, albeit laced with that hubris that we often fail to acknowledge. They do actually play football in other countries.
A small crowd were in some temporary seating as we beamed pictures back from Switzerland. We got word of the result 20 minutes before it was officially announced. The crowd had already started to ebb away when Sepp Blatter stood at the lectern and laboured over opening an envelope with the word Russia written on both sides.
The director shouted down my earpiece. “Just fill for the next 10 minutes so the crowd stay for the 2022 result.” Trying to retain a withering and despondent crowd in sub-zero temperatures proved too much for my broadcasting abilities. By the time Qatar was officially given the tournament we were talking to a couple of unsuspecting dog walkers. The hot chestnut seller by the river had a bigger audience. Even our guests had gone inside.
We have heard a great deal about Qatar in the following 11 years. We’ve been through the corruption allegations, the realisation that it’s hot in the summer in the Middle East and the tragedy of the (disputed) number of migrant worker deaths.
And now we have the complex job of working out how to cover it. On the Guardian Football Weekly podcast the other day I asked an open question about what we should do. I genuinely don’t know the answer. Do we record one episode about human rights at the start of the tournament and then forget all about it and focus on the football? There will be countless journalists and ex-pros who don’t even do that – before we even consider those taking money from Fifa to promote it.
I was as guilty as anyone of nodding to the invasion of Crimea and the repression of political opposition in Russia before 2018 and then forgetting it all as England reached the semi-final. Should I have spent less time worrying about why the Croatians weren’t tired and more questioning how this tournament was legitimising Vladimir Putin’s regime? I have literally no idea what, if any, impact hosting the World Cup contributed to the horrifying scenes we see today. But I don’t think I used my platform enough regardless of whether it would have made a jot of difference.
The latest Amnesty International report into private security firms who employ tens of thousands of migrant workers in Qatar is pretty damning. It says they are still subject to “forced labour” and a number of other abuses and it criticises Fifa for failing “to put in place adequate processes” to address these issues.
So this time around should we break off our discussion of Harry Kane’s late penalty to beat Iran to find out if the working conditions of migrants really have changed? After Ghana get retribution against Uruguay do we talk about what life is like for the LGBTQ + community in Qatar? As Jonathan Wilson said on the podcast, this World Cup will be one of gear changes. Journalists and broadcasters will know workers died providing the stadiums from where they are reporting.
“Hey Max,” wrote someone on Twitter. “I hope between now and the World Cup you can work out your duty as a ‘journalist’ when covering the tournament. Because your answer of ‘I don’t know’ is a little disappointing … Feels a bit of a cop out. Let’s hope you can work out your job by the end of the year!”
Is it a cop out to be unsure of yourself on such complicated issues? Or is it good to be honest? Social media can be blamed for many things, one of which is a seeming desperation for journalists and pundits of all kinds – not just within sport – to have unequivocal opinions on everything. Outrage and fury certainly get more retweets than saying: “It’s complicated and I’m just not quite sure.” Saying you don’t know, or worse, that you were wrong about something, appears now to be an admission of complete failure.
The more understanding we get on the bleakness in sport below the surface, the less I really know how to cover it or what our priorities should be. Clearly this goes beyond Qatar. I routinely fail to mention Abu Dhabi’s human rights abuses during my coverage of Manchester City. I want people to ask Eddie Howe about the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia. But to what end? To get him and the players to walk out on principle and the fans to follow?
It goes beyond the Middle East and human rights – the gamblification of football, the racism, the misogyny, the worrying link to domestic and sexual violence. I don’t check where all the money is coming from all the time.
In December 2010, when that draw was made, social media hadn’t permeated our lives to the extent that you could scroll through war crimes while you sit on the toilet. Dejan Lovren might have hated the idea of teaching children about being open-minded towards different sexualities. Matt Le Tissier might have engaged in conspiracy theories, but they had no way of telling me. I miss that blissful ignorance.
I knew nothing of Qatar and I spent very little time thinking about human