The western press in general, and the British press in particular, has reacted with predictable sourness to Russia and Qatar winning the World Cup bids for 2018 and 2022, respectively. Much of the chagrin has to do with the fact that the winners are bit players in the global football scene and have upstaged the claims of more pedigreed footballing nations such as England, Spain and Portugal (jointly), Japan, Australia, South Korea and the US. The ire has been focused on tiny Qatar, the dark horse if there ever was one, since Russian teams participate in the major European leagues and the country has staged an Olympic event to bolster its sporting credentials. Dark hints of corruption and collusion are circulating. These may or may not be true — Fifa officials cannot be called saints by any means. But even if we account for such shenanigans, it would be hard to criticise the choice of Qatar in terms of Fifa’s mandate to develop football globally.
Qatar’s victory marks the recognition of a geographical shift in the market for football’s fans and investors to Asia, thanks to global broadcasting technology. Few football clubs in Europe, the heart of the global game, look to gate receipts for their profits anymore; it’s the broadcast revenues that increasingly bankroll them and telecasts to West and South-east Asia that are among the fastest-growing (Indian channels’ football offerings have burgeoned since the nineties). The staging of the 2000 World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea was the first indication of that shift. Recent growing investment interest from Asia in established football clubs in Europe, the epicentre of the sport, is a sign of the times. Owners of Venkateshwara Hatcheries bought the mid-table team Blackburn Rovers. A member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family now owns Manchester City, which was previously owned by Thailand’s beleaguered former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, and the Egyptian Mohammed Al Fayed owns Fulham. When Liverpool’s management was searching for an owner earlier this year, it was investors in China, Dubai, Malaysia and India who evinced interest, although the club finally went to an American. Portsmouth, a bankrupt EPL club, was snapped up by Balram Chainrai, a Hongkong-based Nepalese.
The reason Asian football fans should applaud the choice of Qatar is that it will not only bring good football to Asia but also have an impact on the development of the sport. Just 20-odd West Asian footballers play the European leagues, minuscule compared to over 100 from Africa, a product of Fifa’s focus on the region which has created a virtuous circle of payback in these countries from rich African footballers. In any case, why knock Qatar and West Asia? The kingdom has, in fact, hosted the Asian Football Cup once and will do so again in 2011. It has hosted an Asian Games in Doha. As for concerns about reordering the footballing calendar for a winter tournament to account for the desert kingdom’s crippling summer temperatures, Fifa has 12 years to plan for it. And that’s also enough time for the oil-rich Qatar, which has a relatively more liberal regime than most West Asian kingdoms, to build environment-friendly air-conditioned stadiums, which could set new standards in sports stadium technology.
