How are you planning to get over Belgium having a disappointing World Cup?
The same as always, by not caring at all.
In fact, I'd be happy for Belgium to be eliminated as quickly as possible so the rest of the country also stops caring so much about it and we can finally talk about other, actually interesting sports.
This is not new by the way, nor am I saying it now because apparently there is a need for at least 3 articles per day about "last chance for the golden generation" and "will Belgium underperform again". I actually had a lengthy conversation about this with rakleader more than a year ago:
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=26351097 (you'll have to scroll through the part where we talk about the game and the seasonal ladder first).
So in summary what I told rakleader there, and which hasn't changed one bit truly: I don't like noise.
I understand that people want reasons to drink, to party, to celebrate. I just find it not very nice that my own wellbeing is impacted by that. The rest of the year, people seem to find it only acceptable to party in designated locations for it. But when soccer comes around, it's normal to go celebrate on the streets and make a lot of noise.
So my preferred teams are those that make the least noise. I'm hoping for an early exist of Belgium and The Netherlands, the ones who make the most noise where I live, and a finals of Iceland vs. Japan.
However, what is most disappointing about this world cup, and what everyone should be talking about rather than the games, is obviously everything else about it. Or more specifically: everything on Qatar organising it, FIFA being you know FIFA, or as John Oliver neatly describes them: "A cartel-like group of scumbags and assorted criminals who ocassionaly put on soccer matches", and everyone else involved just shutting it for the sake of it. Because money is power.
The only reason that I find it too bad that I didn't watch any of the previous world cups, is that me totally boycotting this one won't make any difference really. I was already implicitly boycotting the previous ones as well.
On that note, we all surely all remember the previous world cup in the super democratic, human rights loving country of Russia. Given FIFA's history, I'm looking forward to the world cups in China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. Oh, you though that was a joke? It isn't actually, it's real:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2030_FIFA_World_CupWe can have our disagreements about what sports we like. I won't dislike anyone for being passionate about soccer. And while it's utterly annoying, I can accept up to a certain degree that sports media in Belgium are all about soccer, with, no exaggeration, competition matches between youth teams in second division, or the newest hairdo of a Belgium player who hasn't playing in or for Belgium in a decade, getting more attention than world championships in lesser popular or lesser known sports.
However, we must agree about the atrocities that are committed in the margins of these type of tournaments again and again and again. FIFA only cares about its money. They don't care about worker's rights, they don't care about dictatorships, they don't care about human rights issues. They are indeed a cartel-like group of scumbags and assorted criminals, and at least some of them are corrupt.
So let's go over a few points:
- A bid that did not fulfill the minimum requirements
- Getting the world cup through corruption and bribery
- Threatening the whistle blower who exposed said corruption
- The integrated system of worker abuse
- Suppression of expression of opinions
- Using FIFA to enforce such suppression
Their bid was pretty horrible. Let's be honest here for a moment, the only reason FIFA allowed Qatar to even continue their bid, to even allow a vote on it, was because of the money. There was no soccer culture, the temperature is way too hot, there were no stadiums, even some cities didn't exist yet, and the plans were full of lies and eggregious errors.
It's like a student being allowed to take an exam while they were not even qualified to take the course, have no experience with the field whatsoever, and never bothered to purchase the material or attend class. They just want the degree because it would looks good on their CV.
And to continue to analogy, they then went on to bribe the teacher to ace the exam. FIFA is corrupt. And if there is not always proof of it, that is simply because they are so corrupt and have so much money as a result, that they can lobby, bribe and threaten to let evidence disappear.
We don't know if the bribery of officials made the difference in getting the bid. Maybe they'd have gotten it without bribery as well. But it still stand that they actively bribed officials and their bid was objectively definitely not the best one.
However, up to this point, sure, whatever... It's bad, but it's FIFA, it's in line of expectations truly.
However, the whistleblower who exposed this bribery got threatened, and still getting threats by the Qatari government up to this day. And she's living in the US now! They exposed her identity, FIFA (surprise...) ignored her evidence and she's actually under FBI protection to this day. Google Phaedra Al-Majid and you can find enough reputable sources sharing her story.
Now, we may turn a blind eye to corruption and horrible bids, but threatening people is obvious never OK.
But we know that it doesn't end with just a single whistleblower getting threatened.
The kafala system led to numerous worker's abuses, thousands of deaths, and even that is likely an underestimate of the harm done to migrant workers in Qatar. To be fair, it has nothing to do with the World Cup, they were already doing it before and other surrounding countries are also doing it. However, none of that is an excuse. The stadiums were built by modern slaves. And I hope we can agree that there is no excuse for essentially enslaving people to build soccer stadiums, especially not "but we were already enslaving migrants to build our skyscrapers" nor "but our neighbour is also enslaving people".
The scale of it all, and FIFA turning a complete blind eye to it, are absolutely horrendous and should result in anyone in their right mind to boycott the event.
Now it seems it's not the worker's abuse that has been on everyone's mind, but the conservative values of the country and that visitors would not be allowed to express themselves.
While I do think that this is pretty minor compared to the above - after all, why wouldn't you obey the laws of the country that you visit - the associated repression is problematic. Qatar is not nearly the worst country in this regard however, and while I personally dislike it, by itself it's not a major issue. If a country suddenly allowed people to murder each other, that doesn't mean that its people could go anywhere in the world to murder people "because we are allowed in our country".
It would be nice if people would relax a bit, and be a tad less conservative when it comes to certain values. With one specific example: being gay is not a disease, people are born that way and can't change it. It's too bad that in a country like Qatar, there is major repression of it. If they want to forbid anyone to kiss or show other ways of affection in public, sure, that's within their rights as a government. Neither do they have to allow gay couples to marry. But you know, don't beat them up and throw them in prison maybe?
However, I cannot stress this enough: it's still better than dying from a heatstroke while building a football stadium in inhumane circumstances.
Lastly, FIFA is aware of all this and actively using its power to stifle all criticism, bending football rules to suppress freedom of speech and expression. I believe they threatened to suspend any players wearing some sort of symbol at one point? And if anyone still had any doubt about how evil they were, just listen to the speech of their boss last week. Rather than ignoring the topic, as they used to do, or pretending to be helping with positive change, he went full on attack.
Obviously, people are recognising that he has a point. And don't worry, I did as well. Next time when someone accuses me of enslaving migrant workers, and on the side killing of a few of them, I'll make sure to tell the police that this person has no right to speak and is a hypocrit because surely one of their ancestors must have done something bad as well at one point. If I slip them a few million, I'm sure police will be more than willing to accept my version.
For those who haven't seen it yet, most of these points were beautifully covered by John Oliver in his show on Sunday. Most of the above I already knew personally, but John Oliver did a great job of filling in some of the blanks for me and explains it in a much more funny and thought-provoking way than I ever could. You can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMqLDhl8PXwAlso, I have no idea how this topic got and remained upvoted. But if you want to upvote something in this topic, let it be this post.
