Ahead of Qatar World Cup, a Gulf dispute plays out in the shadows

The 2022 World Cup will be the first one played in the Arab world, and it has been a hot-button issue in soccer since the moment Qatar won the hosting rights

The pitch landed in an email inbox at the offices of Qatar’s World Cup bid at a crucial time in the summer of 2010, only months before FIFA would meet to pick the host of its quadrennial soccer championship.

The sender was Cornerstone Global Associates, a little-known consulting firm based in London, and in the email the company’s president laid out a plan to assist Qatar — tiny, dusty, hot and, to many observers, ill-suited to host sports’ most-watched event — with its mounting public relations problems.

The Qataris declined the offer, one of several that had arrived unsolicited that summer, and