Soccer: it’s the world’s sport and every 4 years we get to see it in its most premier stage that is the FIFA World Cup. Billions of eyeballs will be watching the best of the best play it out for that coveted gold trophy. You can’t beat the fanfare and the melding of play styles from around the world.

On top of all of that, FIFA blessed us with a host country that as synonymous with the sport as Casey Anthony is to Mother’s Day. There is a kid involved but, at what cost?

Qatar

Apparently for Qatar the cost is about $300 billion and the lives of about 6,500 migrant workers over the past 10 years as the country has been preparing to host this world cup. They had to build hotels, airports, subways, and for the first time, air-conditioned stadiums… And it’s even winter over there right now.

Oh, and whatever the cost was to bribe the FIFA officials for the rights to host this world cup.

Back to the migrant workers, while Qatar has around 2.6 million people in their population, only 300,000 of them are Qatari. The rest are expatriated migrant citizens that are working under harsh labor conditions to build this Fyre Fest of a tournament. To really hammer home the Fyre Fest vibes, they are charging hundreds of dollars a night to stay in fan villages that are built out of storage containers and look like they’re straight out of the stacks from Ready Player One. The tournament actually had to issue out refunds for these containers after long lines at check in and some people didn’t even have functioning restrooms once they finally got to their assigned pod.

And while they were originally going to allow the sale of alcohol in the stadiums and fan villages, they immediately reversed that action just a week or so before the world cup. This is after Budweiser agreed to sponsor the beer sales for $75 million… They truly have no respect for the global ties between beer and sports.

Protests: Give them Beer!!!

This is all to say that it has prompted a bit of a movement around the international web to “Protest the World Cup.” With some cities even going so far as to refuse to show games on TV. I think my favorite to come out of it so far is the scenes from actual European soccer matches where they have held up signs expressing their reasons for boycotting:

• Air-conditioned stadiums instead of climate protection,
• persecution of certain sexualities,
• disregard of human rights,
• no freedom of speech,
• ban on alcohol.

It’s the priorities we all have regardless of the sport or nationality, getting hammered and watching a major sporting event is the one thing we can all seem to agree on. There were even chants by the Ecuadorian contingent shouting, “Queremos Cerveza!” (“We want beer!”)

Even LIV golf events have rowdy crowds and beer celebrations, albeit the events weren’t in a Muslim country but, if you’re going to bribe your way into hosting this and try a hand at “sportswashing,” might as well give ’em what they want.

It Will Still Be Awesome

Listen, it’s the one time every couple of years that us American’s get to see the various styles of play in this global sport. And I will admit, it gets me invested into matches between countries that I sometimes would never think twice about.

I love it all. I hope the Brazil fans bring back the vuvuzelas that dominated their hosting of the world cup and every high school sporting event that year. Each country brings their own flair. The American teams being more aggressive and offensive, African teams running all over the field with their bands in the crowd. (No Cote D’Ivoire blazing around in their orange kits sadly…) This is something I saw firsthand going to a US vs Ghana qualifier in Jacksonville back in 2016. The Ghanaian crowd brought their own bands and culture to the games.

There are even stories coming out of this that aren’t all bad like the alleged Ecuadorian point shaving scandal.

I think my favorite has been the Japanese fans staying after the game to clean up the stadium. I know all too well how this feels as I go the extra step to recycle as much as I can and even hold the door open for women behind me (chivalry ain’t dead yet ladies). These fans went the extra mile to leave the stadium better than when they came, regardless of who was at fault.

All of this is to say I am really looking forward to this World Cup and to seeing a young US team try to make something happen in one of the hardest groups of the world cup and seeing any other upset story lines that might happen. We have already seen Argentina lose to Saudi Arabia 2-1, which prompted the Saudi government to declare the next day (11/23/2022) as a national holiday. Maybe they will try to pull a Cinderella story like Croatia in 2018…

While it is strange to have this World Cup in the winter, I think it’s hard to beat the quadrennial events like this and the Olympics. And out of all the billions of dollars spent, apparently Doha is a beautiful city with a lot of luxury and plenty to look at. Its basically a brand new city, they’re still taking that blue film off all of the appliances.

Sports are king and this sport is the king of them all. Time to enjoy the world’s sport on its premier stage, regardless of the country hosting. “I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win!”