England face Iran in their first World Cup game. The human rights violations currently taking place in Iran are horrific. Yet, due to strict FIFA rules, the game will almost certainly go ahead. And the Qatar World Cup as a whole is awash with controversy, from the thousands that have died building the stadiums to the lack of women’s and gay rights in Qatar. But once the whistle blows, whether we like it or not, the power of sport will almost certainly make us forget all this.
Football is the most global of sports. It is played in every country, across all inhabited continents, by men, women, adults and children. Part of this is due to the simplicity of the sport, it involves a ball that gets kicked towards a goal that is defended. It can be played on grass, concrete, dust, and sand
The basic rules make it an easy sport to watch also one that can showcase incredible athletic skill, tactical awareness, creativity and flair. Paradoxically, its low scoring nature is one of the reasons the potential for great excitement, drama and emotion. As the clock ticks down, the tension up. A one goal lead is difficult to hold on to when the pressure mounts. Throughout the game, momentum shifts as one side pushes forward to score whilst the other retreats deeper to defend, until an opportunity for counter-attack arises, the pressure releases and momentum shifts once again
FIFA World Cup is an opportunity to advertise yourself to the rest of the world. Often, this is by promoting business opportunities and tourism, but it is also a way of saying as a country, you have sufficient wealth to build new stadiums and infrastructure, even if these will end up unused and rotting away in the years to come. A quick internet search for abandoned stadiums indicates the sheer gratuitousness and scale of infrastructure waste from hosting sports mega-events. Consider, example Olympic Stadium which cost $109 million and was used only four times before it was demolished, or Olympic Complex in Athens which was left abandoned after being built to host the 2004 Olympic Games. Hosting these sports mega-events demonstrates this form of soft power. The French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, used the term ‘symbolic power’ to describe the way that political, economic and social capital could be impressed onto others. The symbolic power that says you can spend millions of dollars on stadiums that will be used once and then discarded is huge. It is a way of saying to other nations, that you deserve to be noticed and taken seriously. The fact that Qatar, as host of the FIFA World Cup 2022, can build seven brand new air-conditioned stadiums in addition to the infrastructure of roads, hotels and training grounds, over the space of a few years is a gratuitous display of wealth. That it has reportedly cost the lives the 6500 migrant workers in doing so demonstrates greater power still
As the global game, football is one of the few arenas which hold political clout in the form of soft power. Although it is just two teams of eleven players kicking a ball towards a goal, it represents so much more. And whilst world governing bodies, such as FIFA whose set the rules and offer the rewards, may say they wish to use football.
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