World Cup proving it’s a force for good, despite FIFA and Qatar
You do not have to look far to see soccer’s enormous impact and emotional tug on planet Earth. FIFA, the governing body for what we call soccer and what everybody else calls football, says 3.6 billion people watched at least some portion of the last tournament, held in Russia in 2018. That was nearly half the world’s population then.
But you can’t ignore the negatives – the fan violence, the corruption and the rivalries that closely parallel dangerous sectarian and religious rifts.
And consider FIFA, the organization that preaches coming together but serves as a platform for autocracy’s grievances against democracy. It is not a stretch to argue that the attention it lavished on Vladimir Putin at the 2018 World Cup, which came four years after he had illegally annexed part of Ukraine, helped encourage his decision to mount a full-on invasion this February.
It is also reasonable to point out that keeping this year’s World Cup in Qatar after it had been determined that graft had been involved in the original decision creates a perverse incentive going forward. And protests have broken out over Qatar’s abysmal record on human and labor rights.
Catalyst for change
Nonetheless, the good news is that the World Cup is breaking through. Not the World Cup of false equivalencies preached by FIFA, but the World Cup as it is actually happening, with real people playing soccer to the best of their abilities, much to the delight of billions. The evidence is that it is having some undeniable positives.
Its biggest impact could be in China, the mega-country once thought to be on an arc toward democracy but which has recently swung in the opposite direction. Protests over the government’s draconian and never-ending COVID-19 lockdowns have now grown so large as to pose a significant threat to the communist government.
One of the catalysts of theses protests has been the World Cup, specifically the sight on television of stadiums and plazas in Qatar filled with reveling, unmasked soccer fans. People consider the ability to watch the World Cup something of a human right, making it
hard for any regime to not show it and still argue that its power is legitimate and that it cares for its people. While Chinese state television is editing out close-up scenes of fans, it’s impossible to watch a World Cup game and not see the crowds. And it’s impossible to edit out all the maskless people.
Uncertainty on ‘morality police’
Iran is another place where the World Cup appears to be having an impact. Protests there have been going on since September and have, like in China, picked up in recent days.
The issue is also repressive government in general but specifically the treatment of women: Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested for not being properly veiled and died in the custody of the “morality police.”
The World Cup has focused international attention on that country’s protests. The U.S. soccer federation even posted Iran’s national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic, saying it supports Iranian protesters ahead of the two nations’ World Cup match last Tuesday. After pushback from Tehran, though, the federation deleted those posts.
There is now uncertainty over the status of the morality police after a senior official suggested over the weekend that it had been disbanded.
The World Cup is messy and chaotic, and often involves spending fortunes on stadiums that could better be used elsewhere.
Nevertheless, as it plays out it is hard to deny that this World Cup has been a force for good. Maybe that is why they call it the beautiful game.