FIFA: The dark side of football

Football has always been a popular sport with millions of people watching it all over the world. In 2022 the World Cup final had a global audience of 1.5 billion viewers as revealed by FIFA. That is the most viewers a World Cup final has ever had. The World Cup is all about sportsmanship and positivity amongst teams but the problem lies with the organization behind the World Cup. FIFA has had multiple court cases and allegations about putting workers in dangerous and harsh conditions when building stadiums for the Qatar World Cup. In this article I will explore the dark secrets lurking behind the big name of the FIFA organization.

Firstly, FIFA has been severely corrupted over the past few years with allegations of bribery, fraud and money laundering. In 2017, one court case raised worldwide attention when Sepp Blatter (was the 8th president of FIFA) and Michael Platini were arrested in Switzerland after being accused of money laundering. According to Aljazeera America, Sepp Blatter and 13 other officials accepted bribes of more than 150 million dollars of money from FIFA’s countries representatives. This was not to maintain the integrity of football but to serve their personal interest within the business leading FIFA to be revealed as a corrupt organization. In 2022, the court case was ruled and both men were acquitted, leaving people contemplating if FIFA was a truthful organization.

In 2022, the FIFA organization got major backlash from reporters when the Qatar World Cup happened. For more context, Qatar had to build eight stadiums, new metro lines, and many more key infrastructural projects for the 2022 World Cup leading up to the estimated cost of 220 billion dollars. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) multiple workers “suffered serious harm, including deaths, injuries, and wage theft” when building the stadiums in preparation for the Qatar World Cup. Qatari authorities failed to investigate the causes of the deaths of thousands of migrant workers. They were attributed as deaths from “natural causes” even though most workers had unsanitary living and working conditions, not to mention many having to work in the scorching heat. Back in 2010 when FIFA granted the rights of Qatar to host the World Cup in 2022 there were no set conditions about protection for workers that would deal with such massive infrastructural work. The HRW then stated that FIFA should have recognized that Qatar “lacked the infrastructure” for the World Cup, but unfortunately FIFA ignored this problem? , accumulating major conflict with the families grieving the loss of a worker helping in Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure. Additionally, FIFA ignored several warnings from the workers themselves as well as civil society groups, who specifically asked them to impose strong conditions to protect workers. Not long after several press releases from news outlets, Human Rights Watch and other human organizations started campaigns against FIFA and Qatari authorities to demand financial compensation for wage theft and injuries providing hope for many workers who had to suffer through the harsh conditions.

There are many dark lingering questions? behind the big name of FIFA, leaving multiple people wondering? if the organization brings truthful results in international tournaments or if its host countries show their heavily invested architectural pieces without considering basic human rights laws.