Anyone who has travelled on Qatar Airways recently will have been afforded the exciting opportunity to watch a short feature all about Gianni Infantino on their in-flight entertainment.
In the midst of 15 very self-aggrandising minutes about football’s glorious leader, Infantino says about this World Cup: “For Qatar and for the Middle East in general, it’s an opportunity to present themselves to the world.”
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We’ll gloss over for a moment how patronising that sounds, and instead consider the interesting question his statement inspires: to what extent is this a World Cup for Qatar, and to what extent is this a World Cup for the Middle East/Arabic nations/the Muslim world?
Does this World Cup represent an entire region? Is it a source of inspiration for countries that have never hosted this tournament? Or are Qatar seen as the young upstarts, the rich little peninsula that are out for nobody but themselves?
The first thing to make clear is that we’re talking about a massive slice of humanity. The “Arab world” stretches from Morocco on the north-west coast of Africa to, depending on your definition, the United Arab Emirates or as far east as Afghanistan. If you only define the Arab world as those nations where Arabic is predominantly spoken, we’re still talking about 22 countries with a surface area of over five million square miles with a population north of 430 million.
That is a significant chunk of the world to talk about as one homogenous block. Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of history or geography will know that there’s a world of difference between a country like Mauritania and the UAE. It would essentially be like talking about Portugal and Lithuania as one, on the basis that they’re both in Europe.
That said, the “Arab/Muslim world” isn’t just a vague, fabricated notion, and it does exist in certain spheres. With that comes solidarity, cooperation, interchange and support. These countries share a common language, a common religion: it is logical that they might be able to identify more with Qatar than with the largely white, mainly Christian nations that have hosted the tournament in the past.
The religious element is obviously crucial. This is the first majority Muslim country to host the World Cup, which is incredibly powerful for those in the region and a huge part of how they identify with this tournament. And while many might roll their eyes at the false pageantry of the opening ceremony, it opened with a Quran recitation, allowing observers and the audience to have a genuine experience with Islamic rituals.
It’s notable that the passage chosen promoted inclusion and togetherness: “O, people! We created you from a male and a female, and We made you races and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. The best among you before Allah is the most righteous.”
Also on a basic, practical level, having the World Cup in Qatar means it is closer and accessible for people in the Middle East. Like many other regions, football isn’t only a sport in the Arab world. It’s an outlet away from the problems of life. A hobby for some, a religion for others. Ask most Arabs, and they’ll have another team they support in addition to their country and club, whether these are domestic teams or international teams. Some will pay a month’s salary just to travel the world and see their favourite team. The World Cup being next door is what some have been dreaming of.
Another area of common ground will have been a general bafflement over the fuss about the Budweiser story. While hands were wrung in the West when Qatar decided that no alcohol would be sold in World Cup stadia, shoulders were shrugged in the Arab world, for obvious reasons.
Indeed, for Muslim football fans who regularly attend games, alcohol has always been a difficult thing to navigate in stadiums. It’s not just that watching someone down a pint offends sensibilities: if there’s any alcohol spillage on you, you have to change your clothes before your prayers. In booze-free venues, that is now easier to avoid.
That’s the common ground.
But it is worth remembering that Qatar was involved in a pretty serious, if non-violent, conflict with a range of their neighbours very recently. From 2017 to the start of 2021 a coalition of Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and blockaded the country, effectively trying to isolate them from the world.
This led to consequences as varied as the Saudi-Qatar land border being closed, to Qatar Airways being banned from the airspaces of several nations, to a variety of countries instructing their citizens to leave Qatar, to the feed of beIN Sports being pirated in Saudi Arabia. The dispute was ultimately settled in January 2021, but it just emphasises that the idea of every country in that region automatically being great pals and brothers is not necessarily accurate.
Still, that’s on a diplomatic level. Individuals — like Mishaal, a Saudi fan The Athletic spoke to in Doha before their win over Argentina, don’t care so much. “There were maybe some problems before, but diplomacy is one thing and the people is something else. We’re here to support the football. We don’t care about what happened then. What happened there, keep it there. We’re just trying to enjoy our lives.”
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In any case, it would appear that Qatar — who became the first nation knocked out of the tournament on Friday after a second defeat — is using this World Cup to try to position itself as the centre of Arab mediation. There was no greater example of that than the handshake between Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan, overseen by a grinning Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Qatari emir, after both leaders attended the opening game of the tournament. This was said to have been the result of months of Qatari mediation. Relations between Egypt and Turkey have been… “frosty” for the better part of a decade, so if Qatar can be seen as the broker of a thaw in those relations, it will boost their status in the region.
There’s also the physical distance to think about. The people who have been able to make it to the tournament all seem to be having a terrific time, but it’s worth remembering that Qatar is still 3,500 plus miles away from the western edge of the Arab world. For many, having the tournament in a demographically similar country is all very well, but in terms of physical accessibility it would be easier and cheaper to reach southern Europe.
Could this World Cup be a positive for female football fans in the region?
The situation in Iran is dispiriting and grim, but the sight of their men’s national football team protesting by not singing their anthem against England, in solidarity with those back home, was incredibly powerful.
Consider the story of a female fan from Saudi, who preferred not to be named. She had never before attended a game in the Middle East, until England v Iran. In Saudi Arabia, women were only allowed to start attending football games in 2018. She mentioned that she feels safe watching a game at the stadium in this environment.
The tournament’s opening game was a strange affair, with the host nation slumping to a 2-0 defeat that could have been worse and the stands emptying well before full-time, but it was notable that there were plenty of female fans in attendance, even if there weren’t any in the infamous ‘ultras’ section behind the goal.
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Anecdotally, it would appear that the people in the region are broadly positive about Qatar hosting the World Cup, and the impact it could have.
In some quarters it has been described as an “Arab Woodstock” (the 1969 version, rather than 1999…), in how it has brought fans of different nations together. In Doha, Tunisians, Saudis, Moroccans and Syrians have gathered together, celebrating a shared experience that has never happened before.
“Everything here is wonderful, everything here is perfect,” said Mishaal. “Qatar World Cup opens the door for people to attend. We do it for the only time in our lives. I wouldn’t have been able to go to World Cup in Russia. In Europe, they try to bash Arabian people. Everyone here is happy and enjoying their lives.”
“An Arabic country, a Muslim country — it represents us,” said Ghaze, a Tunisian fan. Abdul, a Moroccan, said simply: “All the people here are brothers.”
In Jordan, The Athletic spoke to a number of people on the topic, all of whom thought of it as a World Cup for the region, not only Qatar. Mouyad is Syrian but lives in Amman, forced to leave his homeland a decade ago because of the war.
“(It will be good for) not just the Middle East, but all Arabic countries. We feel so proud that Qatar has been given this chance. It’s the first experiment for an Arabic country to be given this chance. Qatar have to be responsible, to make sure everything goes 100 per cent well. That will make FIFA give more competitions to Arabic countries.”
There seemed to be a sense that the West was unduly picking on Qatar and this World Cup, too. “A bit disappointed,” said Mawan, another Tunisian when asked for his reaction to talk of boycotting the World Cup. He lives in Germany, so he can hardly have missed the protests over the treatment of migrant workers and the LGBTQ+ community in the lead-up to the tournament.
“Once you get here and see what the country has done… the World Cup had not even started, and you try to boycott it without even giving the people who have worked for years a chance. It’s not fair on Qatar.”
There’s another reminder about the difference in opinion between the Western world/media and those from the Middle East. The Athletic spoke to a number of fans from those countries in Doha, the day after Infantino had made his “I feel Qatari, I feel gay…” speech, in which he accused Europeans of hypocrisy but for which he was roundly mocked by those Europeans. However, everyone we spoke to not only agreed with his sentiments but emphatically backed him for making them. “Everything Infantino said is correct,” said Ayman.
Perhaps the most emphatic word came from the journalist Adham Habib-Allah, who defined this event as “the biggest and most successful moment of the Arab world ever”.
There are elephants in the room. Or not in the room, as the case may be.
Things might have been much more clear-cut in terms of enthusiastic Arab support had Egypt not lost that penalty shootout to Senegal and been in Qatar. Not only is the country arguably the most football mad in the region, but it’s hard to overstate the popularity of Mo Salah, and not just among his compatriots.
Salah’s absence is palpable. He is the symbolic Arab football star, so it would have been important to have him in Qatar. He resonates more in the Arab world than Riyad Mahrez does, for example. There are already a number of Egyptian fans in Qatar (some have travelled, and then there’s the thousands of ex-pats already living there), even though their team is not, so you can imagine how many would have made the trip had they qualified.
Some stars may emerge from the tournament. There were high hopes for Qatar’s Akram Afif, while Saudi Arabia’s Salem Al-Dawsari has received plenty of attention for his brilliant performance and sensational goal against Argentina. But none of them really compares to Salah, in terms of popularity, reputation or indeed skill.
That said, in terms of identifying with individual players, religion might have a bigger role than simply being from the region. There are over 60 players of Muslim faith at the World Cup, which includes players from Qatar, Saudi, Iran, Morocco and Senegal, as well as individuals from teams such as Germany, Switzerland, France, Cameroon and Ghana. That means something.
There is the question of where else should this World Cup have been hosted? If we are to accept the idea of football being a global game, it should obviously be held in the Middle East/an Arab nation at some point. So if not Qatar, where?
The unfortunate truth is that most countries in the region either don’t have the infrastructure or would encounter exactly the same problems or objections that Qatar has. Only Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have the financial capital to spend on World Cup infrastructure with blank cheques.
Morocco’s 2026 bid was a credible one, and satisfied a lot of the original grumbling about being ‘a footballing country’ and the calendar interruption. There is talk that they will bid again for 2030. But like all countries, there are frequent human rights abuses that journalists, supporters and rights groups could decide to protest.
With the expanded World Cup format, a “North African” World Cup in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, (maybe Libya) and Egypt would be attractive. Unfortunately, there are some pretty significant political and socio-economic hurdles to leap over before that could materialise. At this stage, a more plausible joint bid looks like the one between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Greece, which you suspect would simply raise the same questions that this tournament has.
Shireen Ahmed, a journalist for CBC Sports, arguably put it best when she said:
‘There is a way to enjoy the beautiful game and embrace its global supporters and people without worshiping at the alter of the regimes or governments at the helm.’
There is a way to enjoy the beautiful game and embrace its global supporters and people without worshiping at the alter of the regimes or governments at the helm.
— Shireen Ahmed (@_shireenahmed_) November 22, 2022
The hope is that this World Cup will encourage people not to judge the region and its people on the basis of some governments or regimes. Maybe it will bring some of these nations, whose relationship has been uneasy to say the least, closer together.
The fear though, is that the football world will actually emerge from this tournament less united, rather than more.
After the backlash against Qatar, will countries from the global north want to partake in tournaments that authoritarian regimes can use to legitimise themselves? Will the criticism actually be harmful for the prospects of other countries in the region hosting the tournament in the future? The hope would have been that a successful World Cup in Qatar would strengthen the case for other Middle Eastern countries, but might it just go the opposite way?
Might those other countries decide not to bother? At a book launch in Qatar a couple of years ago, a man in his sixties took the microphone to ask a question: “Why are we paying $200billion just to have the entire world come and insult us?” There have already been reports that rulers in Qatar have expressed regrets, that they wished they had not gone to all of this trouble if they were just going to be criticised. Could that put future prospective hosts off?
The question of whether this is a World Cup that represents the Middle East, Arab countries, Muslim people, is a tricky one to answer. The people seem to view it as at least partly their own. The realities of whether that will actually amount to anything, to any tangible good in the future, is less certain.
(Other contributors: Mina Ibrahim, Maher Mezahi, Uri Levy)