Photo by: RosZie on Pixabay.com

By: Rishabh Shah

On the night of the 2nd of December in 2010, a winner was announced to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Countries like the USA, South Korea, Australia and Japan were beaten out by 2 countries hosting the 2018 and 2022 World Cup. Russia was awarded the 2018 world cup played in the western cities of Russia. And the all-important 2022 world cup was awarded to none other than the Arab country, Qatar. 12 years later, just earlier this year, 3 FIFA members admitted to taking bribes to vote for Qatar which was part of a larger scheme involving money laundering and wire fraud. Amid all of the new evidence to relocate the 2022 world cup, they still played it in Qatar. 

In 2018, the Qatari FIFA Minister declared that they would spend $200 billion or more to make Qatar suitable for the millions of tourists and thousands of athletes staying in Qatar. Although much money was spent, some specific laws and political viewpoints wouldn’t change, namely; the law that it is illegal to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, ways that the labor workers were treated, and the ideas going against women rights. 
Regarding the controversy surrounding actual in-match instances, there has been plenty. All over the world, people are discriminated against or made fun of because they may be gay, lesbian or identify as any other gender or sexuality. On the world’s biggest stage, 10 teams led by the Netherlands designed a captain armband which contained the words; “ONE♡LOVE”. This armband could spread awareness all over the world encouraging people to be themselves and not discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. Unfortunately, the idea of the armband was canceled after the FIFA association threatened to distribute yellow cards to the captains wearing them.

Photo by: Freesvg

The second major controversy that is ongoing is what happened before and after the Brazil vs. Serbia match. When the normal Serbian flag was supposed to be displayed, some attributes of the Kosovo flag were included. The Kosovars Football Association wasted no time claiming that the Serbian Government told their team to display this flag to rebel against the fact that Kosovo is Independent. 

All this has occurred before the group stage has even come to an end! Who’s to say that there won’t be any more controversial topics surfacing!

Works Cited

Draper, Kevin. “U.S. Says FIFA Officials Were Bribed to Award World Cups to Russia and Qatar (Published 2020).” The New York Times, 7 April 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/sports/soccer/qatar-and-russia-bribery-world-cup-fifa.html. Accessed 29 November 2022.

Nair, Aadi, et al. “World Cup 2022: what is the OneLove armband and why did FIFA ban it?” Reuters, 29 November 2022, https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/world-cup-2022-what-is-onelove-armband-why-did-fifa-ban-it-2022-11-24/. Accessed 30 November 2022.

Ward, Ian. “All the 2022 Qatar FIFA World Cup controversies, explained.” Vox, 19 November 2022, https://www.vox.com/world/23450515/world-cup-fifa-qatar-2022-controversy-scandals-explained. Accessed 30 November 2022.

“World Cup 2022: Fifa opens disciplinary proceedings against Serbia over controversial Kosovo flag.” BBC, 27 November 2022, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/63768983. Accessed 30 November 2022.