BY FITSUM GETACHEW
When FIFA, the world football governing body assigned Qatar to host the 2022, 22nd World Cup, there were various protests and opposition expressed for a number of reasons. First of all the geographic location was considered too unfriendly for football many said because of the hot climatic conditions there. Temperatures range in the higher thirties and forties and this is hardly ideal for any activity, let alone for football that requires a lot of running and physical challenges for ninety minutes.
This was considered untenable for a tournament that lasts a month with intense matches every three days. This would put at high risk the athletes, it was argued. Secondly, Qatar is not known for any sort football tradition and the risk of the people not being interested in the contest is high and it would not be fair to assign such a huge world competition for a nation such as Qatar when there are so many other nations that are hungry of football and would pay any sacrifice to entertain this huge event.
There were candidates such as the USA, Mexico and others who were ready to host the world cup while Qatar had to build practically all the infrastructure needed to host the contest. Thirdly the country would be too small to entertain millions of fans who would like to go there and watch the matches.
However, it resulted that Qatar had carried out a huge and extensive campaign to win the chance to host the event thanks to its enormous economic clout and the lobbying it made using international football stars as ambassadors. Their opinions were heard across the football world and the board members of FIFA were added to this list.
The likes of former football stars and then president of the Union of European Football Association, UEFA, Michel Platini and the president of FIFA Sepp Blatter were seen to support the campaign for the candidature of Qatar to host the games. Finally when the hosts suggested that the games would be held in November and December rather than in July or August when the climate of Qatar is fiercely unfriendly and extreme, the opposition due to the adverse climatic conditions stopped.
This was in 2010 when it was awarded with the bid to prepare the tournament. Qatar showed the plan of preparing the necessary infrastructure and the financial commitment indispensable to successfully carry out the games. Stadiums were built from scratch.
However all the same lots of controversies continued to flourish alleging that Qatar violated several human rights provisions internationally accepted such as denying people rights and discriminating them on various lines or denying certain civil and political rights to its citizens. Awarding such a huge world competition would be giving it approval for what it did.
The way it treated its immigrant workers was also another point raised by those who bitterly campaigned to deny Qatar the right to host the world cup or make it a failure with various boycotts unless it changed its rules.
But finally when the games began it was football which eventually triumphed with the passion for the sport and the controversies were sidelined despite repeated attempts to dilute the success of Qatar.
In fact, many were heard saying that such a fierce campaign against Qatar was more than anything motivated by prejudice to third world countries on account of some sort of racism because competitions of this magnitude should not be given to countries such as Qatar, a tiny nation with little political importance in relation to those such as USA or Western nations as a whole that are used to monopolizing the platform to host all sorts of important world events.
Qatar in the end has won the bid and it has also shown that it can successfully host the contest with well-organized and arranged facilities both in material as well as human resources. Not only that it has also declared that all those who come to Qatar and do not respect its rules would not be welcome or risk to be repatriated to wherever they came from. This was important because it limited the use of alcohol in and around the stadiums. These were points on which many particularly western countries would not accept without stiff opposition but Qatar did manage to overcome this resistance.
Even before the end of the tournament this world cup has been characterized by various surprises mainly in the positive sense for African teams and others which traditionally were not reputed to have a shining or prestigious accolade of football victories. In other world cups it was almost always taken for granted that African teams would lose to any team and even do so with a huge goal difference. But now we have seen that these teams shined and there were thousands of Africans giving support to these teams given the presence of large numbers of people of African descent in Qatar for various reasons.
African teams performed better than any other world cup scoring goals on their adversaries even when they lost the games. Senegal shined very well and managed to be the first African country to qualify to the round of sixteen winning against a traditionally strong football nation such as Ecuador, Even in its defeat against the Netherlands, Senegal did play very well for the majority of the duration of the match and only an incidental error of the goalkeeper facilitated the goals of the Netherlands.
Morocco was the other surprising African team which by beating Belgium almost provoked a revolution and there were skirmishes between Belgians and Morocco fans living in Belgium. Morocco in fact qualified without losing a single match winning its group just as did England, the Netherlands, or Croatia all of which have a great tradition of football at the highest levels. Similarly, Ghana as well showed resilience in its match against South Korea beating it and scored two against Portugal in the 3-2 defeat. Tunisia beat the champions of the world France while Cameroon beat the five times champions of the world Brazil.
These are totally unexpected results that contributed to the beauty of the competition and confused all the so called football experts in their predictions. The defeat of Argentina by Saudi Arabia was another huge event in the world of football along with the defeat of Germany by Japan which eventually caused its early elimination from the competition. Eventually Japan won the group by beating also Spain one of the fancied clubs for good results in the tournament and qualified for the round of sixteen. Qatar in this sense has given the maximum any competition of this level could give. More people than expected were seen watching matches cognizant of the fact that surprises are at the corner in every match.
African teams have come a long way in football with now fancying even better positions in world football. We remember the best position for an African team was one of Ghana attained in 2010 South Africa when it almost qualified for the last four. Since then no other African team managed to reach that level. We will see if this year things will change.
Many pundits had forecast that teams such as Germany would reach the top four and African teams would not have chance of making it to the last sixteen. But all their forecasts have resulted contrary to their logic because Saudi Arabia beat Argentina, Japan beat Germany, Morocco beat Belgium, Tunisia beat France and Cameroon beat Brazil! All these results can be classified as totally unexpected and this has made the competition more fascinating and suspenseful. That was the beauty of football and at the world cup level it has been recorded as unprecedented.
Talking about the preparation of the tournament Qatar has secured the admiration of the world because few had predicted that it would be such a success from practically every point of view. There were no complaints about the logistics because Qatar has prepared the necessary infrastructure in an advanced manner and it was evident that the management of the preparations was admirable.
We have seen a tiny country with a population of less than two million, most of whom are not even native, has managed to host the world’s biggest and most important football event and having done it successfully it has secured the admiration of the world and most of the criticisms of many international mostly western media had to step back from their original opinions and previsions.
Qatar has demonstrated that even small third world countries can prepare huge events at international level and this could be encouraging for other nations who would candidate themselves to stage such a huge event if they can have the financial means such as Qatar.
The Ethiopian Herald December 21/2022
