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The Graphic Truth: FIFA War Cup
The quarter-finals of the 2022 men's soccer World Cup begin Friday in Qatar, with five teams from Europe, two from South America, and one from Africa. It's going to be war on the pitch in each of the four games, but what would happen if each side actually went to war with each other? We look at who would win each round — and the World Cup — if what counted was not soccer skills but rather military muscle, measured by percentage of GDP spending on defense.
Foreign born World Cup players.
The Graphic Truth: The World Cup of immigration
If you're a soccer player, your dream is to compete in the World Cup — with whatever country will call you up, whether you were born there or not. About 10% of players in the 2022 edition of the tournament in Qatar are foreign-born.
But this is nothing new. Almost 14% of players in Italy '90 were foreign-born and in the colonial era legends like striker Eusébio from Mozambique defended the colors of Portugal. What's more, when FIFA's eligibility standards were more lax, players were allowed to switch sides. José Altafini won the trophy with his native Brazil in 1958 and four years later didn’t repeat victory because he’d signed up for Italy, his adopted country. Wars matter, too: Robert Prosinecki played for Yugoslavia in 1990 and later for independent Croatia in 1998.
Also, the distribution of foreign-born players in Qatar 2022 is unequal: While half of Morocco's squad was not born in Morocco, four teams — Argentina, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea — have no foreign-born players at all. Fun fact: The Williams brothers, both born in Spain, are playing for different countries — the older Iñaki is realizing his grandfather's dream by playing for Ghana, where the family's roots are, while Nico is with La Roja.
We take a look at the number of foreign-born players in World Cup national squads.
The Graphic Truth: The World Cup of graft
FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, has long been tainted with corruption scandals — and the 2022 edition of its top competition is no exception. The World Cup is being held in Qatar despite the fact that even FIFA itself "admitted" that bribes were exchanged before the tiny emirate with zero soccer tradition got the nod in late 2010. But what about the countries whose national teams qualified for the tournament? We take a look at how the most and least corrupt countries would play against each other as soccer teams on a pitch. Note: if you're missing Saudi Arabia, believe it or not it ranks as less graft-ridden than Croatia.
A sculpture of the World Cup trophy is pictured in front of Khalifa International Stadium in Doha.
Will politics or soccer win Qatar's World Cup?
Sunday is the day half the world has been eagerly awaiting for four years. The men's soccer World Cup — the most-watched event of the most popular sport on the planet — kicks off in, of all places, Qatar.
Hold up. A World Cup in a tiny country with zero soccer tradition that’s never qualified for the tournament? Yep. And that’s just one reason why, so far, this particular edition has grabbed more headlines over its scandals than the Beautiful Game.
First, Qatar has been called out for its dismal human rights record, especially regarding migrant workers. In February 2021, a bombshell report by The Guardian claimed that more than 6,500 guest laborers from South Asia had died while building the stadiums. (The Qataris, of course, deny it all.)
And then there's how Qatar treats LGBTQ people. Same-sex relationships are strictly banned, transgender people must undergo conversion therapy, and until a couple of months ago LGBTQ people were still being detained for no reason other than, well, being LGBTQ. Doha has tried to downplay it, but the tournament's official ambassador did it no favors when he told German TV that homosexuality is "damage in the mind."
Second, it all reeks of corruption. And that's on both sides: Qatar and FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, with a long and checkered history of being riddled with graft.
Ever since it awarded the 2022 tournament to Qatar — and the 2018 edition to Russia — over higher-merit bids almost 12 years ago, FIFA hasn't been able to shake the widely held suspicion that bribes were taken. The scandal blew wide open in 2015, when the FBI indicted some top officials for running FIFA like a mafia and forced longtime President Sepp Blatter to step down.
But even after FIFA admitted missing red flags like the sizzling temperature, it decided to keep Qatar as host. The consequence? For the first time, the World Cup was rescheduled for the winter months, requiring domestic soccer championships everywhere to take a two-month break in the middle of the season (allegedly) thanks to gas-rich Qatar's deep pockets.
FIFA got away with it because, quite simply, it has too much global sway. Indeed, the political power that comes with deciding who gets to host the most-followed sporting event on the planet cannot be understated.
Qatar, for its part, is using the World Cup to pitch itself as a peace-loving Middle Eastern country that wants to attract more tourism and foreign investment, sell more of its plentiful natural gas, and project more soft power in a notoriously volatile region.
There's been (some) backlash. In the run-up to the tournament, Qatar has become toxic for celebrities. While singers like Rod Stewart or Dua Lipa were praised for turning down hefty sums to headline the opening ceremony, Nicki Minaj got flak for recording the tournament’s theme song following the social media outcry over Qatar's anti-LGBT laws.
Meanwhile, in Europe activist fans have piled on by calling for a boycott. Whether that means not watching in person or not watching at all is unclear, but so far the strongest national team reaction has come from Denmark, whose players will wear "toned-down" uniforms in Qatar.
Yet, despite all the controversy, the vast majority of soccer nuts around the globe will still tune in. Why?
For one thing, it's not the first time a World Cup host has had a dodgy human rights record. After all, Argentina won its first trophy at home in 1978 while the country was run by a fearsome military junta. For another, the political stuff usually stops when the ball starts rolling.
Once the tournament is underway, most fans’ attention will switch quickly from human rights to the human magic expected from the feet of megastars like Leo Messi, Kylian Mbappé, or Neymar. (We'd mention Cristiano Ronaldo too, but he's in a bit of a slump these days.)
So, dear reader, let's kick the question over to you: Will the story of Qatar 2022 be scandal or soccer? And while we're at it, who do you think will win? The smart money seems to be on Argentina and Brazil, but there are plenty of underdogs — hello, Senegal — with a shot at going all the way.
Let us know your thoughts on either here.This was featured in Signal, the daily politics newsletter of GZERO Media. For smart coverage of global affairs that normal people can understand, subscribe here.
U.S. President Joe Biden holds a bilateral meeting with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2022.
Qatar going global?
On Monday, US President Joe Biden designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally after hosting its emir at the White House. Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was the first Gulf leader to meet with Biden in person since he became president.
Biden and Tamim discussed how Qatar might supply more of its plentiful natural gas to Europe in case Russia’s President Vladimir Putin decides to turn off the tap in response to possible US/EU sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. That’s a long shot, given that 90 percent of Qatari gas exports are now tied up in long-term contracts — although Doha has ways to to fill a short-term supply gap if needed.
Still, the meeting tells us two things.
First, Biden wants to make it harder for Putin to weaponize Russian gas. A gradual diversification of Europe’s energy supplies could eventually undermine Russia’s ability to blackmail the EU.
Second, the fact that Tamim is publicly considering the idea means Qatar is ready to expand its geopolitical influence beyond the Middle East.
Eurasia Group analyst Sofia Meranto says Qatar has much to gain from “being called on for help by the US to address energy questions in Europe.” It also signals the emirate’s “ability and ambition to play an outsized role in geopolitics.”
It’s a dramatic turn of events for Qatar. The country of just 2.9 million people and the world’s second-largest exporter of liquified natural gas is famous for punching above its weight diplomatically. But doing so comes with risks.
A year ago, Qatar emerged from a four-year blockade imposed by a Saudi-led group of fellow Arab states unhappy with Qatar’s ties to their rival Iran, support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and the negative media coverage they sometimes received from the Doha-based Al-Jazeera TV network. The blockade — which cut off the emirate by air, land, and sea from Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — made the Qataris look (further) West for help.
In fact, Qatar, which already hosts the largest US military base in the Middle East, has since become the go-between for Western powers doing business with some of the region’s most dangerous actors.
For example, if you want to talk to the Taliban these days, call Qatar. The militant group now ruling Afghanistan has operated an office in Doha since 2013. The Qataris brokered the Trump administration’s 2020 peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Following the US withdrawal and the Biden administration’s refusal to formally recognize the new Afghan government, Doha is now America’s de-facto ambassador to the Taliban.
In essence, Qatar helps Western governments talk to the Taliban without having to acknowledge the legitimacy of their brutal regime.
The Qataris also sometimes pass messages between the US and Iran, drawing on the emirate's warm ties with Tehran that other Middle Eastern states have long resented. Qatar supports ongoing talks to return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and Iran wants Doha to help negotiate the release of dual-national Iranian-Americans jailed in Iran.
Now, Qatar sees in the looming Ukraine energy crisis an opportunity to take its soft power onto an even bigger stage. And the timing could not be better for Doha.
This November, Qatar will host the 2022 soccer World Cup, the most-watched sports competition in the world after the Summer Olympics. Will Putin attend?
How political sports boycotts (really) work
In recent days, America's pastime has become deeply embroiled in America's politics. US Major League Baseball pulled its annual All-Star Game (an annual friendly matchup of the sport's best players at every position) out of Atlanta to protest the Georgia state legislature's recent passage of restrictive new voting laws.
Just a week into baseball season, the move is a big deal in the US. But more broadly, it's the latest in a series of increasingly high-stakes sports decisions around the world that have a lot to do with politics.
China under the spotlight. Human right groups outraged by China's genocide in Xinjiang are putting pressure on Western governments and corporate sponsors to withdraw from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. At the same time, Chinese sports fans have turned on Nike — which makes the kits for China's national football and basketball teams — for expressing "concern" over allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang's cotton industry.
Meanwhile, European football (soccer) players have defied a FIFA ban on political statements in order to join a growing chorus of protest over the rampant mistreatment of migrant workers in Qatar, which is set to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. (Some 6,500 migrant laborers building the stadiums have died in the decade since the gas-rich Gulf kingdom was awarded the tournament under fishy circumstances.)
But what these boycotts actually intend to achieve is probably not what you think. All of these major sports events — watched by hundreds of millions of fans across the world and which draw in billions of dollars from corporate sponsorships — will surely take place as scheduled.
The odds of Georgia expanding voting rights for minorities to get back the All-Star Game in Atlanta are as slim as those of China admitting it holds Uighurs in mass internment camps and uses them as modern-day slaves to pick cotton to ensure all nations attend the Olympics. Interestingly, Qatar caved somewhat by promising long-overdue reforms to improve the conditions of migrant workers.
That's because sports boycotts are not usually designed to reverse the policies they are opposing. But they can be quite effective in achieving other outcomes.
First, their unique combination of cultural and economic power make sports an outsize arena for political disputes to play out.
The MLB's decision to drop Atlanta is less about weighing on the latest US political culture war than taking a stand on not further restricting voting rights, which most Americans support. It also follows the tournament organizer's own efforts in recent years to attract younger, more racially diverse fans.
Second, boycotts raise the cost of pursuing certain policies. While the specter of Western countries pulling out of Beijing 2022 may not be enough for China to reverse course on Xinjiang, a mass withdrawal of corporate sponsors could lead Beijing to lose billions of dollars in revenue from the games.
However, the domestic boycott against Nike is being led by Chinese celebrities and consumers who want the American brand to stop talking about the Uighurs. This puts Nike into an impossible position in China: on the one hand it risks a backlash from its Western clients if it doesn't speak out (which is what the NBA did when it kowtowed to China regarding Hong Kong's democracy protests in 2019), and on the other hand it can lose a lot of business in China if it does.
To further complicate things, China is also in a tough spot: stoking nationalist sentiments by unilaterally terminating these agreements would be immensely expensive. And all of this is going to get worse as US-China relations continue to deteriorate.
Third, boycotts are a great way to draw wider attention to problems that boycotts alone won't solve.
In the 1960s, bans on white-only sports teams in international tournaments, including the Olympics, helped rally public opinion against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Today, with many sports superstars among the world's top influencers on social media, it's a lot easier for them to raise awareness about any issue, and reach a wider audience.
But wading into political minefields in the current highly polarized environment can also be immensely risky for athletes, sports leagues and governments if they make the wrong call. Just ask Colin Kaepernick.
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