THE 22nd Fifa World Cup kicks off this weekend in Qatar when the host nation meets Ecuador in Al Khor on Sunday.

It is a significant World Cup for a number of reasons. It will be the first to be hosted in an Arab country, and also the first not to be held in the northern hemisphere summer — ie not in May, June or July.

It is important for the World Cup to be global and to be held in a diverse range of host countries, but it is also important that it remains so for the right reasons.

The recent actions of the sport’s governing body, Fifa, especially those that have come to light in the past decade, show that this isn’t always the case.

Behind the football itself, the World Cup is one of the most political sporting events around. The whole process is political, and Fifa is almost like a governing political party using football as an emotional lever.

People have fond memories of past World Cups even if the football on show might not have been the most entertaining or of the highest quality. The tournaments are more about a place and a time. About the characters who star in it, such as players, managers, and fans. About the stadiums, the cities and the people in them. It is these emotional connections that those with other aims outside of football will exploit.

Due to the focus on the country of Qatar and its rulers in recent years, increasing as the tournament draws closer, it can feel like any attempt at sportswashing has already failed. But the success or otherwise of a World Cup, whatever its aims beforehand, can usually only be assessed retrospectively.

With this in mind, though there have been numerous calls for media boycotts, this could be one of the most important World Cups for journalists to report from on the ground.

If all critical, investigative journalists did not attend, or if all of those refusing to attend ignored what is happening and has happened already, then the world will be presented with tournament reports solely consisting of press releases, match summaries, and PR spin.

What will be more useful is for even just a handful of reporters to provide accurate descriptions of what is happening on the ground in Qatar, including warts and all accounts of the conditions there and tales of what has happened in the country even aside from the World Cup.

A host country still needs to be respected, though. Not all of the people in a World Cup country will be football fans, and many will try to go about their everyday lives as this tournament, concentrated in an unusually small area for such an event, lands on their doorstep.

But at the same time, that country needs to be in a position to welcome a diverse world to its shores as part of the deal of hosting a global event, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Qatar is not in such a position.

When England hosted the latter stages of the Euros in 2021, English fans hardly even respected their own country. There was fighting outside Wembley and trouble elsewhere in London involving the home fans as England reached the final.

The people of Qatar might be understandably wary of a repeat of those scenes, but Qatar itself would also seem like an unwelcoming country for many people, especially for women and LGBTQ+ supporters.

Qatar has witnessed among the worst working conditions in the world during the preparations for this tournament. A light has been shone on the bad treatment of workers, usually migrants, and the horrible conditions they are subjected to, both physically and contractually. It is at the worst end of a bad deal for workers across the world and shows that this is an international issue.

It is for this reason that there can be a sense of people in glass houses throwing stones, as similar problems, to varying degrees, exist throughout the Western capitalist world as they do in the Middle East. Capitalism’s character traits are generally global. But it is right during one of the most high-profile, emotive sports tournaments that the host country comes under scrutiny.

And highlighting such issues will seem hypocritical. Hypocritical because LGBTQ+ people will have similar worries when stepping out of their homes in Britain, especially given the way the media and some influential people treat them, which can then influence the views of society in general. 

These groups are even targeted by media that would normally be considered liberal or left-leaning. Media that normally support minority groups, their rights, and their freedoms.

Hypocritical because the next World Cup is to be co-hosted by the United States. A country where a character like Donald Trump, who will share many of Qatar’s views on people and the world, was recently an elected president, and has just announced he will run for the Republican presidential candidacy ahead of the 2024 election — two years before the World Cup there.

Hypocritical because the British government is hardly welcoming itself. As the England team poses with migrant workers at training in Qatar, back home there is a government whose treatment of immigrants has seen it create a phoney “migrant crisis” to detract from an actual cost-of-living crisis brought on by years of austerity under an increasingly malignant Conservative Party. Among many other things.

It is nevertheless important to address the issues in Qatar during this time and hold Fifa to account. This is not the first politically charged World Cup and it will not be the last, but it is the one happening right now in a country with a poor record on human rights, workers’ rights, and diversity. It is right such things are highlighted there and now.