Qatar World Cup

On Sunday, Nov. 20, Qatar - Ecuador will kick off the World Cup and, after years of discussions about the oil and gas state, the focus can turn to soccer. Jaap de Groot was there when the 2022 World Cup was awarded to the Persian Gulf emirate on December 2, 2010 in Zurich and was one of the first to reveal that the choice of Qatar was rigged. On the eve of the world's biggest sporting event, he takes stock on location in Qatar.

Driving through Doha, one immediately notices the price of gasoline: fifty cents per liter. In that respect, Qatar takes good care of its citizens. Then I pass a large building with "Dutch Institute for Hotel Management" on the facade. Not so strange in itself, since all the major hotel chains have branches in the mini-state. Do you want to learn the hotel business? Plenty of internships in Qatar. The Dutch national team selection chose to stay in Doha at the St. Regis Hotel, which has 335 very luxurious rooms. The stately building is considered one of the many prime locations in Qatar, where seemingly on every street corner there is a five- or four-star hotel. Then you drive past the Four Seasons, further on looms the Kempinski and within a five kilometer radius are five hotels from the Hilton chain. It is reminiscent of Singapore, also a country with a small local population and a huge international influx. In the 1997 census, Qatar had a population of only 522,000. By 2004, this had risen to 744,000 and has since risen to 2.8 million. The World Cup has clearly had an impact on this, as since the tournament was awarded in 2010, the population increased by as much as 900,000, an increase of more than 30 percent. This cannot be separated from the enormous prosperity in one of the richest countries in the world. The money beckons, so they flock there from all parts of the world. One of them, by the way, is Gianni Infantino, president of World Football Federation FIFA, against whom criminal investigations are ongoing in Switzerland. Living in Qatar, he has little to fear from Swiss justice, meanwhile he too lives there like a grand prince. For there is untold money in Qatar. For example, my companion Mubarak picked me up in the latest Lexus. So brand new that inside everything was still in plastic. Mubarak clearly hadn't given himself time to unpack his luxurious car.

Pierced card

I am in Qatar on Friday, June 10, the day on which the World Cup should normally have started in the oil and gas state. At least that's how it was decided on Dec. 2, 2010, by FIFA's Executive Committee, half of whom are now behind bars. Courtesy of the FBI, not coincidentally from the country that then lost to Qatar in the election. This aside, when it became clear within 24 hours that the allocation of the 2022 World Cup was rigged, the federations, including the KNVB, continued to look the other way. That's why I have trouble with the politically correct stuff about Qatar and the discussion of whether or not we should go. Because it comes 12 years too late. Moreover, it is just now a little too easily overlooked that all the outside pressure did lead to improvements. According to the United Nations, there have been such social changes in the last five years that Qatar is actually leading the Middle East in many areas. So too with respect to Dubai, where planes full of Dutch people take out the flowers every week.One important improvement is the dismantling of the kafala system, in which visas and work permits are contractually linked to one employer. Workers are now allowed to change jobs without their boss's permission. Passport confiscation is also actively opposed and a legal minimum wage has been in place since 2021. It is also clear that the circulating figure of 6,500 deaths allegedly during the construction of the World Cup stadiums has been taken out of context. In fact, it refers to all migrants from Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who died in Qatar between 2010 and 2020. So including construction workers and not just construction workers. Incidentally, it is still not clear how many actually died during the construction of the eight stadiums. Walking through the streets of Doha, by the way, I wonder how anyone can work at all in this blood heat. Indeed, on the day the World Cup was supposed to begin in accordance with Qatar's winning bid, the thermometer is ticking 51 degrees. And I wonder how docile the more than two hundred soccer associations could have been to initially opt for a summer World Cup in Qatar for 2022. A period when you can fry a T-bone steak on the tarmac here. Anyone who had done a little Googling at the time could have already seen that temperatures between 40 and 50 degrees are normal in June. Yet then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his pals got away with it. By now we know why. About half of the voting FIFA members had an envelope with contents slipped under the hotel room door. So the weather report screens went black for a while.

Respirator

After which, in 2015, it was decided to deadheadedly change the entire soccer calendar for 2022 and hold the World Cup in winter. Again, all the federations, including the KNVB, let it happen. But fair is fair: the Qatari themselves had promised on that particular December 2, 2010, to provide all stadiums with air conditioning. Countless air conditioners. Therefore, twelve years later, I decided to take a look at the Khalifa International Stadium, where the Netherlands - Ecuador will be played on Friday, November 25. And indeed, at straw height, innumerable round holes have been made in the stand wall. Just like on the first ring. Holes all around the stadium and always one meter away. So these are the air conditioners, blowing cold air into the stadium that is pumped from a central cold storage facility in the heart of Qatar toward the stadium. The cold room contains an iceberg, against which ten Titanics would be hopeless. And indeed, ten meters from the holes in the stadium wall, the temperature appears to have dropped from 51 to about 28 degrees. Then the center spot, right under the open roof. Well, that's where the sweat broke out on me anyway. Not 51 degrees, but well over 30. But who cares, I have seen the Dutch team play against Ireland in Orlando during the 1994 World Cup at 40 degrees. With Frank Rijkaard on a respirator for minutes afterwards. A few days later in Dallas the Netherlands - Brazil was also played at 35 degrees, so what are we talking about? Then the World Cup just went on in the summer, then everyone could go on vacation and all the leagues started neatly on time in August and September. In Qatar, it will all be different. The air conditioners in the stadiums prove that conditions certainly do not have to be more extreme than in 1994 or during the 2014 World Cup in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza at the Netherlands - Mexico. Yet in 2015, FIFA decided to flip the entire soccer calendar seven years later and have the World Cup completed within 29 days between Nov. 20 and Dec. 18. This means that games in Qatar must be played every three days, whereas the standard is four days. Incidentally, the KNVB did not budge in 2015 either and resigned itself to the fate imposed by FIFA President Sepp Blatter & Co.

MASTERS MAGAZINE

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