Qatar has become a byword for a certain kind of extreme consumerism. When the Gulf state wanted UK influence it bought some of the most iconic buildings in London – the Shard and Harrods; to find a voice in the global media it created al-Jazeera; to transform Doha into a cultural hub it commissioned a star architect to build a vast new national museum and splashed a billion dollars on fine art.
But the kingdom’s money-can-buy-you-anything approach is about to run into the sand. Qatar is struggling to assemble a decent football team that can compete at its own party – the 2022 World Cup. The reason should give its rulers pause when they consider how to achieve their stated goal of becoming an “advanced society” by 2030.
Put simply, Qatar doesn’t have enough citizens (approximately 400,000) to produce 11 players capable of excelling against the world’s best. It is as if the people of Nottingham tried to take on the might of Brazil and Germany – a task beyond even Brian Clough.Oil and gas have made the Qataris the world’s richest people, with a per capitaGDP of $137,161, so of course they have flown in Spanish World Cup winner Xavi Hernández and former Chelsea star Gianfranco Zola to help. But they also know that the talent pool is too shallow to create the conditions for the kind of sporting Darwinism that turns people like Xavi and Zola into stars by rejecting thousands more. A solution is staring them in the face if only they could rethink what it means to be Qatari.
Meet the 1.8 million migrant workers from India, Nepal, Uganda, Kenya and beyond who currently exist behind an invisible wall in Qatari society. These people work six-day weeks on blazing construction sites, steer taxis and stand guard at malls and villas, thousands of miles from home for very low wages. As 2022 World Cup footballers they have huge potential – the large majority are young men and many are fanatical about the game.
One day last month, after spending time with Xavi and Qatar’s U22 team on lavishly irrigated training pitches at the multimillion-dollar national training base, I drove out into the industrial zone to meet Roland and Samuel, Ugandans building schools near the Saudi border for £6 a day. They are also obsessive footballers and play for their employer’s side in a tournament called the Workers Cup, but have more to give. “In the industrial area it could be as though nothing is happening about the World Cup and football in Qatar,” Mubiru said. “It is a different world.”Qatar currently ignores people like this as candidates for the national team because the country’s stance towards migrant workers is rooted in fear and, perhaps, some prejudice. Instead of embracing the talents and efforts of migrants, as America did in the 20th century and Germany is doing today with Syrians, they are not allowed to become citizens and are tied to their employer under a system criticised for creating conditions of forced labour.
But Qatar’s talent shortage means it now has a chance to make a virtue of necessity. It should scout the migrant camps for football stars, make the best of these citizens and throw them into national sides. It would be a statement of intent and perhaps then it could field a team in 2022 that combines the privileged sons of the Qatari plutocracy with the migrant working class.
Qatar might then be on its way to becoming the advanced society it claims to want to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment