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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Bad Sports Open Thread: Qatar’s World Cup

Bad Sports Open Thread: Qatar’s World Cup

by Anne Laurie|  February 28, 20229:05 pm| 41 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Sports

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Preparing turf for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is environmentally costly as an elite corps of groundskeepers have to maintain 144 green, lush fields, including eight stadium pitches and 136 training grounds https://t.co/vIhbMHNuoh pic.twitter.com/ulRV8UjgsI

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 22, 2022

Back in 2013, I ran across a most informative & entertaining series by Dave Roth, explaining the genesis of Qatar’s bid for the 2022 World Cup:

… FIFA is FIFA, which is to say it’s this sort of smuggo mafia of puffy, predatory globo-elite males in suits, all of them dedicated to extracting some sort of rent from the world’s totally helpless and justified love for soccer. And FIFA being FIFA, it has all these wildly un-transparent internal processes — everything done by design in secret, endless dodgy handshake deals between men whose handshakes are mostly worthless — that seem almost to incent lawlessness…

More recently, in 2020, questions were raised about whether the new miracle vaccines would be effective enough to prevent a global superspreader event.

And now — FIFA has been strongarmed into ‘suspending’ Russia, for the moment.

As a totally unqualified spectator, I have to assume that’s gonna screw up some of the already tight qualification scheduling between now & November, yes?

Also:

World Cup host Qatar funded a two-year, $10 million covert influence campaign against a FIFA executive committee member critical of the decision to host the tournament in the tiny Gulf nation, documents reviewed by @AP show. https://t.co/IcSzblNjH1

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 27, 2022

As head of the German soccer federation, Theo Zwanziger was among his sport’s most prominent critics of the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. He publicly attacked the energy-rich Gulf nation’s human rights record. He questioned the wisdom of staging the world’s most popular sporting event in searing desert heat.

“The infinite wealth of this small country of Qatar spreads almost like a cancer through football and sport,” Zwanziger once said. A member of FIFA’s executive committee, he urged world soccer’s governing body to reverse its 2010 decision.

The Qatari government was so concerned by Zwanziger’s criticism that it took action. It paid more than $10 million to a company staffed by former CIA operatives for a multi-year covert influence operation codenamed “Project Riverbed,” according to internal company documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

The records indicate that the goal of the operation was to use spycraft to silence Zwanziger. It failed…

The Qatar World Cup, now scheduled to start in November, is the culmination of more than a dozen years of effort and untold billions spent to help propel the tiny desert nation onto the world stage.

The endeavor has long been dogged by allegations of corruption and wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors said in 2020 that bribes were paid to FIFA executive committee members to gain their votes. Qatar has denied any wrongdoing.

Documents reviewed by AP provide new details about Qatar’s efforts to win and hold onto the tournament, specifically the country’s work with former CIA officer Kevin Chalker and company, Global Risk Advisors. The documents build on AP’s previous reporting about Chalker’s work for Qatar.

Qatari officials did not respond to requests for comment…

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41Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    February 28, 2022 at 9:12 pm

    Project Riverbed ran from January 2012 to mid-2014 and “successfully employed complex traditional intelligence tradecraft to target individuals within Zwanziger’s circle of influence and modify sentiment associated with the Qatar World Cup,” according to one document summarizing the Riverbed effort reviewed by the AP.

    In reality, this amounted to creating an “influencer network” made up of people close to the German soccer official who would pass on views to him that were favorable toward Qatar hosting the World Cup. To do this, GRA would send a “source” or “throwaway” to speak to the influencers in a way they would not suspect was a concerted messaging campaign, according to internal documents.

    I bet there are some Juicers who are paid to do the same thing.

  2. 2.

    JMG

    February 28, 2022 at 9:15 pm

    @Baud: I was a sportswriter for 30 years. If only.

  3. 3.

    Starboard Tack

    February 28, 2022 at 9:23 pm

    @Baud: Do you think it’s damaging your campaign?

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    February 28, 2022 at 9:29 pm

    It’s like deciding to run Paris to Dakar in Antarctica. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    February 28, 2022 at 9:29 pm

    Russia should be banned from World Cup until Putin is hanged from a lamppost.

  6. 6.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 28, 2022 at 9:30 pm

    The awarding of the WC to Qatar has been a point of contention since it was made, and there have already been clashes between the supporters of some of Europe’s biggest clubs — particularly German giants Bayern Munich — and boards and ownership groups (German football is run under a completely different set of rules we are used to here in the states and that goes for the other leagues as well in differing fashions) to divest from Qatar and other petro-states with woeful human rights records. Fans and supporters of European clubs across Europe, but particularly in England, have seen more than one shady government entity purchase clubs.

    The latest was the purchase of Newcastle United, a sleeping giant of English football with a strong, passionate fan base. It was purchased by the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) much to the chagrin of opposing fan bases because of the huge amount of revenue that will now be available to the club, but also because Saudi Arabia is a brutal regime with a terrible human rights record. They are joined by Prince Mansour of Abu Dhabi who owns Manchester City (currently the dominant force in English football and have been for the past decade) and across the channel to Paris St. Germain, owned by the Qataris.

    You have Chelsea in London owned by Roman Abramovich, who made his billions as a Putin crony and who is now feigning a desire to be a peacemaker in Ukraine and other less than savory outlets are eyeing clubs in Europe, again, particularly in England, Europe’s most profitable league by far.

    Now, on the internation front, the backlash against Russia at least led to one very unexpected surprise, they actually embarrassed a normally shameless FIFA which announced Russian teams will be banned from tournament play indefinitely. FIFA, as crooked, greasy, and corrupt as two Olympic committees, really had no choice after every national football association in FIFA refused to play any Russian team under any name or banner at any level.

    We’ll have to wait to see how things develop, but the fact still remains that Qatar getting the WC was an exercise in naked graft and corruption, and thousands of human beings have paid with their lives as the country raced to ensure it had the facilities to host the tourney.

  7. 7.

    West of the Rockies

    February 28, 2022 at 9:42 pm

    @Mike in NC:

    Would you settle for drowned in a dirty toilet bowl?

  8. 8.

    laura

    February 28, 2022 at 9:46 pm

    @Baud: If you are insinuating that Rikyrah’s daily sunny good morning greeting is a fifth column, I will hunt you down, paper-cut you, and generally oppose your electoral campaign.

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    February 28, 2022 at 9:53 pm

    FIFA is in a worldwide competition with the IOC to be the most corrupt sports organization on the planet.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    February 28, 2022 at 9:58 pm

    Can’t link from iPad, but Disney has paused distribution of their films to Russia. That’s gotta hurt!

  11. 11.

    Geminid

    February 28, 2022 at 10:00 pm

    In summer of 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and allies like Egypt tried to impose a blockade on Qatar. They complained that Qatar hosted terrorists and Turkish troops, and that reporting in Al Jazeera was giving other Arab governments a bad name. The Qataris could still fly goods in, and rather than give in on these and other issues Qatar worked around the blockade until early last year, when the other countries finally gave up. Qatar ran low on milk early on, so they flew in dairy cows and fodder.

    When it’s not thumbing it’s nose at neighbors and bribing FIFA officials, Qatar punches above it’s weght in diplomacy. Their good relations with both the U.S. and the Taliban facilitated our exit from Afghanistan last summer. Qatari diplomats also mediate between Israel and Hamas, and with Israeli acquiescence Qatar provides a lot of financial support to Gaza’s residents..

  12. 12.

    Leto

    February 28, 2022 at 10:03 pm

    I was deployed to Qatar in late 2013 to early 2014, and I saw some of the construction occurring for this. I remember all the promises made about how the Qatari’s would develop this on the field air conditioning, and this tech and that. I just laughed at it all. When I left in March, it was already 100F by 11am.

    The heat was the least of the problems as the absolute appalling conditions for the, essentially, slave workers there was really finally coming out. None of that has changed. And then when this “influence” campaign was uncovered and nothing happened? As VDE stated, FIFA and the IOC are in a perpetual competition for just absolute worst sports org on the planet.

  13. 13.

    sdhays

    February 28, 2022 at 10:05 pm

    @laura: If that’s the first person you thought of….that’s on you.

    /s

  14. 14.

    Leto

    February 28, 2022 at 10:07 pm

    @debbie: Netflix refuses to comply with new Russian rules

    Print
    U.S streaming giant Netflix has responded to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine by saying that it will not comply with new Russian rules to carry 20 state-backed channels.

    Netflix was due to fall under a series of new obligations in Russia on March 1 after it was added to a register of “audiovisual services” overseen by the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, last year.

    The obligations mean that Netflix would have had to stream 20 Russian federal television stations, including the likes of Channel One, NTV and a channel run by the Russian Orthodox Church, Spas. Channel One in particular has close links to the Kremlin.

    Basically Netflix wouldn’t distribute free propaganda for Russia. Funny thing is, if the Ukraine invasion hadn’t happened they probably would’ve complied with this law.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 28, 2022 at 10:11 pm

    Rob Lee @RALee85

    “The US has solid intelligence that Putin is frustrated and expressing unusual bursts of anger at people in his inner circle over the state of the military campaign so far and the worldwide condemnation of his actions,” according to 2 current US officials.

  16. 16.

    sdhays

    February 28, 2022 at 10:20 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: And here I thought he was probably taking it all in stride and with good humor because that’s always been the type of guy he seems to be…

    This reminds me of how during the Tramp era (thank you, Martin!) everyday would have another story that basically went “Tramp was upset over … and lashed out at people until his secretary started blasting ‘Masquerade’ from ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ over the Oval Office speakers…” It wasn’t exactly news.

    Still, nice to rattle his cage that the Kremlin is still leaking like a sieve.

  17. 17.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 28, 2022 at 10:33 pm

    Slava Malamud has his own history with Putin and his supporters.

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 28, 2022 at 10:33 pm

    @sdhays: I’m very curious about what kind of intelligence assets the US/West has around Putin these days.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    February 28, 2022 at 10:40 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Guessing that’s all filed under “declassify 150 years from now”.

  20. 20.

    Barbara

    February 28, 2022 at 10:48 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Aren’t we all?  Well, actually, I am simply grateful for the intelligence and hope like hell whoever has a hand in giving it to us stays safe.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 28, 2022 at 10:49 pm

    @dmsilev: heh, I was thinking as I typed, “I wonder if I’ll live long enough to find out”

  22. 22.

    The Dangerman

    February 28, 2022 at 10:53 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hope it’s damn good and we start fucking with his head. “Hey Vlad, how were your scrambled eggs? How about that trip to the bathroom with a Penthouse? Dude, those stories are not real”.

    He wants to play let’s kill a President, hey, sounds like fun. And if Israel is serious about never again …

    That Fiona Hill article is scary as hell.

  23. 23.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 28, 2022 at 10:53 pm

    World Central Kitchen continues being awesome.

  24. 24.

    Fair Economist

    February 28, 2022 at 10:53 pm

    @Leto: Note because of sanctions, Netflix will have a lot of trouble getting paid in Russia anyway.

  25. 25.

    dexwood

    February 28, 2022 at 10:55 pm

    @HumboldtBlue: Just made another donation. Thanks for putting the link up to the story.

  26. 26.

    Calouste

    February 28, 2022 at 11:02 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe they don’t have any, but they have some good psychologists who can predict how Putin will behave, and they’re trying to make him think that they have assets around him. See if Putin is getting so paranoid that he is going to take out his inner circle (and they will then take him out, out of self-preservation).

  27. 27.

    Ken

    February 28, 2022 at 11:11 pm

    @dmsilev: Though it seems to me that if they could release a ten-second video of Putin raging at people (without compromising the source, obviously), that would also have some beneficial effects. Especially once it gets on youtube and tiktok.

  28. 28.

    CaseyL

    February 28, 2022 at 11:13 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: There are a lot of issues I have serious curiosity/questions about, the full facts of which will likely never be revealed.  And I’m OK with that, as long as the results are good.

  29. 29.

    zhena gogolia

    February 28, 2022 at 11:21 pm

    @Ken: I think we’ve already had that with Naryshkin.

  30. 30.

    danielx

    February 28, 2022 at 11:26 pm

    @Baud: ​
     
    Haven’t been paid yet, and I’m getting testy about it.

  31. 31.

    burnspbesq

    February 28, 2022 at 11:31 pm

    AFAIK, there has been no formal announcement, but the sensible thing would be to award Poland a walkover against Russia and have them play the winner of Czechia vs. Sweden for a spot in the World Cup.

    Nobody is talking much about it, but Ukraine is also in the playoffs. They are scheduled to play Scotland in Glasgow on 3/24, with the winner to face either Wales or Austria on 3/29. If their domestically-based players can’t get out of the country, Ukraine would be significantly hampered, as a strong majority play for either Dinamo Kyiv or Shaktar Donetsk—and query whether Shaktar players would be considered eligible to represent Ukraine in light of the DSSR’s “declaration of independence.”

  32. 32.

    Calouste

    February 28, 2022 at 11:34 pm

    @Fair Economist: Which is probably behind quite a few of these business decisions, like Disney, Warner, and Sony halting the release of new movies in Russia. Why risk your reputation for money you can’t get to soon, might lose a lot of value, and might get confiscated by either side?

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 28, 2022 at 11:38 pm

    Chris Murphy @ChrisMurphyCT (thread)
    Just leaving classified briefing on Ukraine crisis. A few takeaways that I can share:
    1/ Confirmation that the Russians have fallen behind their timeline. Ukrainian resistance has been fierce and there have been multiple Russian equipment and logistics failures.

    4/ The U.S. and allies are coordinating to not only freeze the assets of Putin and his oligarch allies, but to seize those assets as well. This is likely a further step than Putin’s inner circle anticipated.

  34. 34.

    Calouste

    February 28, 2022 at 11:38 pm

    @burnspbesq: I think that they’ll probably give Russia’s spot to Slovakia, the team that finished immediately behind Russia in their group. Conveniently also a neighbor of Ukraine.

    It’d be awesome if the Scots etc threw their match against Ukraine and let them qualify, but not very likely to happen.

  35. 35.

    Martin

    February 28, 2022 at 11:41 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: At one point the US had an Undersecretary General of the UN, a Soviet diplomat, as an asset.

  36. 36.

    burnspbesq

    February 28, 2022 at 11:42 pm

    @Calouste:

    Czechia vs. Slovakia and Scotland vs. Wales would be LIT.

  37. 37.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 28, 2022 at 11:45 pm

    And seeing as though this is a sports related thread, here are some kids learning to count courtesy of the NBA’s current hottest team, the always sensational Philadelphia 76ers.

    Mrs. Persoleo and the kids at Ursuline Academy in Wilmington are feeling it!

    Here’s the original song they’re singing, absolute classic!

  38. 38.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 28, 2022 at 11:50 pm

    @burnspbesq: ​ 

    Another concern is how many national players have volunteered to serve in the army. It’s going to end up being pretty significant, I think.

  39. 39.

    Captain C

    February 28, 2022 at 11:50 pm

    @burnspbesq:

    and query whether Shaktar players would be considered eligible to represent Ukraine in light of the DSSR’s “declaration of independence.”

    IANASL but given that they’re presumably Ukrainian citizens who are registered with the national team, plus almost no one’s recognized the DSSR (and certainly not FIFA), it shouldn’t be a problem for them to play if they can make it.

  40. 40.

    burnspbesq

    March 1, 2022 at 12:01 am

    @Captain C:

    I think that’s probably right, but you underestimate FIFA’s ability to fuck up a seemingly easy decision at your peril.

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    March 1, 2022 at 1:44 am

    @burnspbesq:

    Per Wikipedia, Shakhtar Donetsk football club has been based in exile in Kyiv for the past eight years, since the Russian invasion in 2014. That’s where its HQ and training ground are. From 2014 to 2017 it played its home games in Lviv, from 2017 to 2020 in Kharkiv, and since 2020 in Kyiv.

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