Qatar 2022

How did this small, Middle Eastern autocracy, with no international soccer pedigree or modern stadium infrastructure, land the ultimate international sporting competition: the 2022 FIFA World Cup? Money. Lots of money.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
The circular conveyor belt a cabman Dou's Trobooven International Airport
is chaos. Passengers returning from Qatar elbow for room to
grab their cellophane wrap suitcases and battered cardboard boxes filled
with expensive and hard to get stuff like flat screen TVs,
mobile phones, and designer clothes. But in this clamor you'll

(00:28):
find another type of traveler, eyes swollen with grief, clutching
crumpled tissues, reaching into the jumbled mess of luggage to
claim something far more precious. The big wooden boxes they
reach for are sometimes a light beige color, other times

(00:48):
they're painted a bright red. They all have the same
words stamped on the side, human remains. We've got coffins
coming home every day more than a worker day on average,
is dying. It's a senior see repeated in airports across
Asia and Africa. FIFA's alleged tradition of bribery is taking

(01:10):
a real human toll. Ever since the tiny oil rich
nation of Qatar was awarded the World Cup in that
sham election back in two thousand and ten, millions of
migrant workers have fled the soul crushing poverty of Nepal, Kenya, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,
the Philippines in countless other countries for jobs building Qatar's

(01:34):
World Cup stadiums, new roads and tourist hotels. But opportunity
has come with a deadly price. In the last decade, thousands,
yes thousands, of these temporary workers have died, their families
left to scuffle with tourists to retrieve their remains. The

(02:00):
Guardian found that over six thousand, five hundred migrant workers
have died in Qatar since the country was awarded the
contract for the two World Cup. More than six thousand,
five hundred people, just regular people trying to make a
better life, killed while working in Qatar. It's hard to

(02:21):
wrap your head around a death toll that large, and
if you can believe it, that staggering number might even
be larger. The exact number of workers killed in support
of the World Cup isn't truly known because Qatar, FIFA's
World Cup partner, refuses to release the information. The Guardian newspaper,

(02:46):
which initially compiled the list of deaths, only had death
records from five countries India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Many other countries in Africa and Asia refused or are
unable to provide the data, so it's almost certain the
total is higher. But the scale of the death should

(03:07):
be world shaking news on its own, and I guess
the average soccer fan hasn't even heard about it. I'm
Connor Powell. This is episode twelve Qatar. By listening to
this series, you now understand FIFA's dark history. It's racist origins,

(03:32):
it's misogyny, it's coziness with authoritarian regimes, it's singular pursuit
of profit, it's systemic corruption. And you've heard how Qatar
won the rights to host the biggest sporting event in
the world, and how that sketchy vote led to the
indictments of dozens of soccer officials in two thousand and fifteen.
But with the first match of the World Cup just

(03:55):
months away, I want to explain to you in detail
that two thousand ten selection of Qatar is doing to
some of the poorest people in the world. And why
a desert country smaller than the state of Connecticut, with
scorching hot temperatures and no modern FIFA quality soccer stadiums whatsoever,

(04:16):
has turned out to be an awful dare I say
im moral choice to host the World Cup and how
FIFA's decision to award the tournament to Guitar shows FIFA
hasn't learned its lessons, as the organization continues to exhibit
an almost total disregard for human rights and basic decency.

(04:43):
It's a clever commercial. It plays on every emotion a
sports fan has. Weaving in and out in between the
legs of dozens of grown adults. A young boy in
jane shorts with ratty white sneakers skillfully maneuvers a tattered
soccer ball across the bone dry dirt floor of a

(05:04):
public market. He encounters a conveniently placed set of mirrors.
He leans in to steal a glimpse of his own reflection,
but instead of seeing himself, the young soccer player sees
the beaming smile of the Argentine superstar Lionel Messi looking
right back at him. Sat get any I guess in

(05:29):
The essence and allure of this television commercial is pretty obvious.
No matter what language you speak or where you come from,
you could be the next Messi. This slick commercial just
one of many that ran across Africa in the last decade.
Was produced and paid for by Qatar's Aspire Academy. The

(05:52):
Aspire Zone is a world class destination for sports excellence
and has some of the world's finest sporting state dames
and venues, where we offer unparalleled opportunities for athlete development,
education and the making of champions. With its distinctive sloping

(06:12):
sapphire blue roof, Qatar's massive, thirteen story tall Aspired Dome
Stadium can be seen from miles away. At nearly one
point three million square feet, that's more than twice the
area covered by the Superdome in New Orleans. Aspire is
a state of the art sports training complex created to

(06:33):
produce the next generation of world class soccer players. This
place is astounding. I mean even the top clubs in
the world like Manchester United environed men off and go
train there and they're astounded by the facilities. That's journal
of Sebastian Abbott, author of The Away Game, the epic
search for Soccer's Next Superstars, which is all about sport

(06:54):
and Qatar. The Aspire Academy, he said, is not only
the largest end or sporting complex in the world, it
also reflects in embodies tiny Qatar's global ambitions. There's a
joke that Katar is really just a family business with
a seat at the United Nations because it's basically the
family wealth of the royal family. Qatar, or more specifically,

(07:20):
its royal family, led by the Emir Shaik Tamim bin
Hammad Alfani, is determined to use its seemingly infinite wealth
to establish the Gulf nation as a major player on
the world stage. While its neighbors Dubai and Abu Dhabi
have tapped their vast resources to become commercial and financial hubs,

(07:43):
Qatar has tried to transform its oil and gas fortune
into political and athletic power. They've used that cash in
all sorts of ways to try and, you know, increase
their standing on the world stage. You can sort of
understand it from their perspective, because is if you're a
tiny little country like they are, how else are you

(08:04):
going to throw your weight around. Long before Qatar was
awarded the World Cup, the Emir's brother, shake Jessum, a
massive soccer fan who built a lush, regulation size soccer
field at his palace in Doha, set out to accomplish
what seemed an impossible task to elevate Qatar's national soccer

(08:25):
team into the upper echelons of the sport. Qatar's national
soccer team is anything but a powerhouse. It's never come
close to qualifying for a World Cup, and it's consistently
ranked in the bottom half of FIFA's international tables. With
a native population of just three hundred thousand or so citizens,

(08:47):
Qatar doesn't have the depth to field a native team
that can compete in its own regional soccer tournaments, let
alone the World Cup. What it lacks in players, however,
it more than makes up for in financial resources. After
spending a reported billion dollars constructing the Aspire Academy complex,

(09:10):
Qatar launched a massive worldwide search for young soccer players.
They started at home in Qatar and found few quality prospects.
So Qatar set its sights on Africa, home to a
billion people. I hate to say it's so crassly, but
in Africa, Qatar found people passionate about soccer who were

(09:31):
too poor to pass up the opportunity. Beginning in two
thousand and seven, backed by slick TV commercials featuring messy
and armed with free Nike gear to pass out to
hopeful stars in the making, Aspire Academy scouts began combing
through the dusty and dirt soccer pitches of Morocco, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria,

(09:54):
Senegal and South Africa. In the last decade alone, more
than five billion young boys have tried out for Qatar's
Aspire Academy. Here's Sebastian habit. There's such a small nation that, yeah,
how else are they going to compete on the world
stage unless they can tap players from other countries. They
were scouting thirteen year old boys. So I would find

(10:17):
these young kids, bring them to Katar, have them live
in Doha at Aspire Academy, train them and eventually give
them passports and have them play for the Katar national team.
To succeed in athletics, Qatar has long recruited outside talent.
Qatar does have a long history of basically paying foreigners
to become Katari nationals and compete for Qatar in sports,

(10:41):
in the Olympics and otherwise. I mean, they've donated everything
from weightlifting to ping pong to chess, and they've done
it in soccer as well. In two thousand and three,
the Kenyan steeplechase runner Stephen Sharno accepted Qatari citizenship in
exchange for one thousand dollars a month. A few years later,
Qatar offered three Brazilian soccer players a million dollars each

(11:05):
to become Qatari citizens and hopes they had helped the
tiny peninsula nation to qualify for the World Cup. The
plan didn't work. Now Qatar isn't alone. It is a
fairly common practice to recruit outside talent. It's done by
many countries, including the United States. But recruiting children, some

(11:28):
as young as thirteen, it's not only uncommon, it's downright sketchy.
You hadn't ever really in history had a country go
and conduct a massive talent search like this across a
place like Africa, searching for players for its national team,
and so it's sort of unprecedented, even though by all

(11:50):
accounts the Aspire Academy is a top notch training program
with state of the art medical and educational facilities. The
practice of recruiting young athletes off alarm bells not only
with European sports columnists and human rights groups, but also
within FIFA, which we know, you know, historically they don't
seem overly concerned with human rights. They got a lot

(12:12):
of criticism from folks internationally that they basically kind of
like harvesting Africa's best young players to nationalize them, which
didn't go over well with a lot of folks. Not
long after Qatar launched the aspired program, FIFA change that's
eligibility rules, making it harder for young players to switch nationalities.

(12:33):
They never sort of openly admitted that that was definitely
their plan, although at the beginning they said we were
open to these kids becoming country players, but they eventually
changed their tune and say no, these players will play
for their own national teams. It definitely continued to be
controversial because a lot of people continued to suspect that
even though Katar was saying these kids wouldn't represent Qatar,

(12:55):
that somehow Katar would find a way to have them
do that. For many years, FIFA's presidents at Bladder was
critical of Qatar's player harvesting. Qatar is stealing the best
players from Africa meant the home teams weren't as strong,
and the Confederation of African Football they didn't like that. Remember, Bladder,
like his predecessors y'all havlange South Africa as his base

(13:19):
of support. Both of them want a lot of FIFA elections,
keeping the legal and the illegal money flowing to African countries.
Then in two thousand and eight, Bladder visited Qatar and
the trip, says Sebastian Abbott, let him to have a
change of heart, platter, changes tune and became very supportive
of football dreams and aspire. And on that trip in

(13:41):
two thousand and eight reportedly said to the Amir of Qatar,
We're going to bring the World Cup to Katar, and
two years later FIFA did just that. From a distance,

(14:04):
Dohas Abdullaphin Jessam Street just seems to disappear and becomes
a stunning turquoise blue body of water. No, it's not
a desert mirage caused by Qatar's legendary summer heat. Instead,
several hundreds of the busy downtown road was painted blue
in two thousand and nineteen in an experiment to reflect

(14:27):
the sun's rays and reduce the city's overall temperature, known
to reach highs of one hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit,
cracking car dashboards and melting plastic trim. To state the obvious,
Qatar is a climate that makes plain soccer outside in
the summer impossible, even with the streets painted blue. Summer

(14:49):
temperatures and cutsar can reach some fifty degrees celsius, a
difficult environment to hold a professional sporting than outdoors. The
idea of staging the World's Cup in the desert has
been tentious since its announcements. FIFA's own inspection team, after
visiting Qatar in two thousand and ten, called the oppressive
heat a potential health risk. A country that is a

(15:11):
hundred and five degrees in the summer, a country that
had virtually no infrastructure at all as far as soccer stadiums,
this just made absolutely no sense for them to win
the bid. We now know Qatar bribed a lot of
people to win the two thousand twenty two World Cup,
but the wealthy Gulf nation also made a lot of

(15:33):
promises the FIFA before that two thousand and ten vote,
and now they've got to be reconciled. The lack of
modern FIFA style stadiums, event infrastructure, and Qatar's searing heat
we're all seen back in two thousand and ten as
significant challenges that would prevent FIFA from awarding a summer
tournament to Qatar. Qatar acknowledged its potential shortcomings and promised

(15:57):
to quote novel approach to the summer event and pointed
to the Aspire Academy as proof it could design massive
sporting facilities in the desert. It promised mitigations, money will
be thrown at the problems and the hate will be
overcome by technology for the countries and promising cobbon neutral
and cooled stadiums, training facilities and fan areas. Energy will

(16:21):
be supplied by Solo Park, with money seemingly not an issue.
The CEO of Qatar's World Cup bid, Hassan al Thawati,
promised to build twelve new state of the art temperature
controlled stadiums and to avoid the mistakes of previous World
Cup hosts like Brazil, who built stadiums that languished and

(16:42):
blood communities dry when the tournament ended. Here shake Hassan
al Thawatti making his case, the government has guaranteed four
billion dollars to cover the costs of our twelve stunning
football specific, state of the art stadiums. After two we
will this mantle the modular elements of our stadiums and

(17:03):
reconfigure a total of a hundred and seventy thousand seats
to create up to twenty two new stadiums in developing nations.
But four years after FIFA awarded Guitar the two thousand
twenty two World Cup, the wealthy golf Kingdom began backtracking
as the logistics of a summer tournament became untenable. First

(17:25):
ago the number of stadiums they promised, which was cut
from twelve down to eight, and then they radically altered
the traditional summer schedule of the tournament. After much debate
and deliberation, FIFA confirmed a Winter World Call for cutter In,
which will run from November to December. The temperatures will

(17:46):
still be uncomfortable in the winter, but doable with air
kindishteing if it all works. However, moving the tournament to
avoid the worst of Qatar's heat also puts players safety
at risk, and reek's havoc on soccer's lucrative professional leagues
like Italy's Loliga, Germany's Bundesliga, the UK's Premier League, and

(18:09):
even America's own MLS. They all will be forced to
shut down mid season for about six weeks. The tournament
schedule is different this time, as there will be four
games every day during the group stage, a first in
World Cup history. To try to accommodate the many professional
leagues that will be impacted by this unusual winter World Cup,

(18:34):
Viva has had to reduce the number of days in
the tournament. Normally, thirty two team World Cup we played
over the course of thirty two days. During the two
thousand and eighteen Russia World Cup, players had about four
to five days off between games, but with quitars shortened schedule,
the games will be played over a compressed twenty eight days.

(18:56):
Most teams will get three days off between games, but
in the knockout state some will only get two days
of recovery. This will be the shortest tournament since nine
when they're only sixteen teams competing, meaning the very best
players in the world are being forced to play with
reduced recovery times between matches. Many players will then immediately

(19:18):
return to their domestic leagues, jumping right back into the
rigors of professional soccer with little chance to rest. Oh
and the COVID nineteen pandemic has completely rearranged the qualifying
part of the two thousand twenty two World Cup, making
things even more difficult. Sure these athletes are all professionals
who make a ton of money, traveled by private jets

(19:41):
and stay in five star hotels. But FIFA, which let's
remember is supposedly all about the good of the game,
is forcing the world's best players to put an unprecedented
strain on their bodies. It's conceivable Qatar's World Cup will
be one of the most injury riddled tournaments. Ever, However,

(20:02):
as problematic and dangerous as the Qatar World Cup will
be for players, it's nothing, and I mean it is
nothing compared to the horrors FIFA and Qatar have unleashed
on the people building the World Cup infrastructure. It was

(20:23):
late March two th Norway's best players nervously looked at
each other as they walked out under the nights lights
and onto the green soccer pitch. Please rise, Oh no Way,
with slight nods of their head and sly glances of support.

(20:44):
One by one, they peeled off their red warm up jackets.
Wrapping their arms around each other's shoulders, they unveiled their
message as their anthem played. All eleven starters of Norway's
national soccer team before their tooth thousand, twenty two World
Cup qualifying match against tribalter were the same white cotton

(21:05):
t shirt. Emblazoned across their chest was the phrase human rights.
On and off the pitch. Norway's statement of protests was
only the first. The next night, Germany's national side took
the pitch with the phrase human rights spelled out in
large white block letters on their black shirts. Then Denmark

(21:27):
made a plea their target Qatar, specifically it's abysmal human
rights record and brutal treatment of migrant workers. For the
last decade, FIFA has ignored calls to strip the World
Cup from Qatar. Here's FIFA presidents at bladder in two
thousand thirteen, who did everything in his power to avoid

(21:48):
even talking about the corrupt two thousand ten vote and
the growing concerns human rights groups had expressed about the
rush to build a tournament in the desert. The decision
taken by Executive Committee in October that there is not
one single doubt that the World Cup twenty twenty two

(22:12):
will be organized in Qatar, decision taken by the Executive
Committee on the second of December and not diversible. Today,
FIFA is led by longtime soccer executive Gianni Infantino, who
were placed the bladder after the godfather of soccer was
booted out of office in two thousand fifteen. After Norway

(22:35):
and the other team's voiced their protests in the spring
of two thousand and one, FIFA under Infantino issued a
statement saying the players would not be punished and that
FIFA believed in freedom of speech and the power of
soccer to be a force for good. Whether the sport
under FIFA's watch is a force for good is still

(22:56):
very much up for debate. That soccer and the World
Cup are a force of that, there is no doubt.
One only has to look at Qatar's ever transforming landscape,
with its endless tangle of new roads and metro tracks,
glistening skyscrapers, and massive steel stadiums, all built at an

(23:17):
unimaginable cost. Work is progressing on Kata's World Cup venues,
but Amnesty International says improvements to migrant worker rights are
not progressing fast enough. Long before European soccer players began
protesting Qatar's treatment of migrant workers, groups like Amnesty International

(23:37):
and the International Trade Union Confederation we're pushing for new
laws and worker protections. Qatar has made improvements, but the
conservative Arab Kingdom and FIFA have rejected accusations that the
thousands of workers who died were building World Cup infrastructure.
The headline that came out of The Guardian was inherently misleading.

(23:59):
That's Hassan Alpha Watti, the CEO of Qatar's World Cup
organizing committee. He insists the reports of thousands of deaths
lack contexts. Six workers did not die on workup World
Cup stadiums. If we're looking at specifically World Cup stadiums,
we have had, unfortunately, three work related deaths and thirty

(24:20):
five non work related debts. Frankly, it's Alpha Watti's argument
that lacks context. He doesn't explain how the other six thousand,
five hundred workers died, and he doesn't even address the
thousands of bodies leaving Qatar and arrive in in African
and Asian airports. You see, Qatar and FIFA only want
to count the fatalities directly related to construction of new

(24:44):
stadiums and training facilities, but those are only a small
part of the building going on to support the World Cup.
The construction and Qatar is booming dozens of projects, including
seven stadiums, Rhodes hotels, and even a new air report
have been completed or are underway. It is these projects,

(25:04):
say human rights groups like Amnesty International and the Guardian newspaper,
that have killed thousands since got won the right to
host the World Cup back in all this development construction
expansion is because of the World Cup. That's Mustafa Cadri,
executive director of Equitum Research, which advocates for the labor

(25:27):
rights of migrant workers. He's done reporting for Amnesty International
about Qatar and the World Cup. He says, the Qatari
World Cup Organizing Committee and FIFA have overlooked all of
the construction projects built to support the World Cup when
releasing their official death count. It's all related. They're building
this massive railway system, new hotels are being built, new

(25:51):
public spaces, shopping malls. It's really obvious that all of
this is connected. So this idea that you can somehow
isolate what happens within the World Cup from everything outside
it is simply just nonsensical. Qatar intentionally keeps the death
records of migrant workers vague, issuing death certificates with ambiguous

(26:13):
descriptions like natural causes or cardiac failure. Many death certificates
simply say the cause of death is unknown. Remember, these
are mostly young and healthy man that Qatar imports to work. Statistically,
this isn't an age group that should be dying of
natural causes or cardiac failure, unless, of course, they're forced

(26:33):
to work in unsafe environments like the insanely hot temperatures
and Qatar. And really, why isn't Qatar doing more to
investigate these deaths. Sharon Burrow, the International Trade Union Confederations
General Secretary, didn't hold back when asked about Qatar's brutal
working conditions. Qatar is a slave state in the twenty

(26:54):
one century. Even when the construction projects don't kill the worker,
they're still forced to live under barbaric conditions, and for
most of the last decade, FIFA couldn't have cared less.

(27:19):
Doha's glass and steel Altbita Tower is famous for its vertical,
twisting design. It's long symbolized guitars march to a more
modern future. Even today, as it's been joined by dozens
of other newer structures, the iconic building sticks out on
Doha's skyline. When the two thousand twenty two World Cup

(27:42):
Organizing Committee was looking for office space about a decade ago,
the Albita Tower was the obvious choice. From its thirty
eighth and thirty ninth floors, Qatar soccer bosses developed the
early blueprints for the first ever tournament in the Middle East.
As much of a beacon for development as the Albita

(28:02):
Towers for qataris. It also represents the callousness in inhumane
system that underpins Guitars March of Progress and then two
thousand twenty two World Cup. Some of the men who
built these offices have become victims of serious labor exploitation.
You see, back in two thousand twelve, just as planning

(28:24):
for the World Cup was ramping up, it came out
that many of the migrant workers who built the sleek
new Albita Tower we're basically living as modern slaves. They
went some paid for over a year. They were abandoned
by their employer and left to live in squala. That's
from a Guardian newspaper report. Qatar's government, including its Prime Minister,

(28:47):
knew of the situation and for months did nothing. In fact,
the treatment of Albida's workers it's hardly unique. Many migrant
workers in Qatar live in horrible conditions. After all our
work d This is the sort of home they returned to,
overcrowded compounds, often twelve men to a room, and minimal

(29:09):
bathroom facilities. Here, again, as Mustafa Kadji, who spent years
investigating labor practices in the Middle East, the only way
to describe them is appalling. You're talking about often is
completely broken down, sort of Soviet era looking, very concrete
apartment blocks with unwashed walls, of very dirty walls with

(29:30):
no one coming to clean. The ground is very filthy,
often with toilets which might have cubicles with no doors,
with broken sinks with terrible smells, kitchens which are really
infested with insects. When you go to these sites, the
first thing that really comes to mind is it feels
like a prison. You've got these gated areas, the security
have to check in when you go to work accommodations.

(29:53):
There's often bars around their windows. They're very clear sort
of boundaries, and it's also that the sense of physical
enclosure is really really strong. This life of squalor and
indentured servitude isn't unique to Qatar. It's the norm across
the entire Middle East from migrant workers and has been

(30:14):
so for decades cut her. Another Arab Gulf states developed
a system called kafala, meaning sponsorship, to bring in workers
from around the world. Businesses like I don't know, say,
a firm building World Cup infrastructure, uses third party agents
to lure workers from poor countries and then the construction
firm sponsors the workers employment in a country like Qatar.

(30:38):
On the surface, it seems like oh when when these
workers get hooked on this belief, this idea that their
life can be better, the firms get healthy young workers
and desperate families get a shot at a better life.
You're eighteen years old, so there's increasing pressure from your
family to get married, to have children like your elder

(30:58):
brother or your realty is that are older than you,
and you don't really see many opportunities in your home country.
And they'll really win them over with these stories of
these amazing opportunities and that over a short period of
time you'll be sending over so much money that you'll
eventually have enough money for a dowry or to have
a wedding and have children, all that sort of thing.

(31:18):
But they have to go far away and they have
to pay really large sums of money, but it's worth it.
It's almost like getting a mortgage on a house. You know,
when you're young, you sort of wonder how on earth
will you pay off that mortgage, But you kind of
feel eventually you'll pay off that loan, and what you'll
have at the end of it is as an asset.
In their case, the asset is a job, is money

(31:38):
they can send home and a better prospect of life.
So that's how they get hooked in. What recruiters don't mention,
or the feces, smeared bathrooms, the twelve hour days under
the heart golf sun, or the fact that workers residency
rates are tied to the job. This is Mickey Warden
of Human Rates Watch and Jeremy Shap of ESPN. If

(32:01):
your employer is abusive or forces you to work long hours,
forces you to live in squalid conditions, there's really nothing
you can do about it. A migrant worker can't leave
the country without an exit visa. That visa has to
be approved by his employer, no matter how callous, in humane,
or just playing awful the company is. This inability to

(32:23):
switch jobs leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation. The winner to
organize the two twenty two FIFA vote Cup is Ka.
Long before set Bladder announced Qatar as the two thousand
and twenty two World Cup host, the follows systems in

(32:44):
moral hazards were well documented. Here's Qatari saik Mohammed bin
Hammad Alfouni admitting as much back in two thousand and thirteen.
I said previously, this workers welfare issue has come about
long before we were awarded the hosting rights. We've had
a tremendous amount of workers in for the past fifteen

(33:04):
to twenty years. FIFA executives knew way before two thousand
and ten that a World Cup and Qatar would require
a massive infrastructure program, one the likes of the soccer
world had never seen before, and that meant a huge
number of workers would be sent to Qatar to work
under deplorable conditions. Knowing this, FIFA and Sepp Bladder did

(33:28):
what they always do, look the other way. As far
as FIFA is concerned, the onus is on the companies
that employ the labors. Last year, FIFA's president said workers
are the responsibility of the companies who hire them, not
of FIFA. From the beginning, FIFA sloughed off any responsibility.
Here is set Bladder in two thousand and fifteen when

(33:49):
asked about worker treatment, I know many people hold me
ultimately responsible for the actions and reputation of the noble
the football community. We all, I cannot monitor everyone all
of the time. FIFA keeps insisting there isn't much you

(34:12):
can do about the treatment of migrant workers and their deaths.
FIFA benefits from these environments where scrutiny is highly limited,
and yet publicly, when there is some scrutiny and there's
exposureable the bad things that is made public, will say, well,
we don't have control. Well, it can't both be right,
of course, with things FIFA really cares about, no organization

(34:36):
is more aggressive or demanding. Remember Brazil and it's ban
on alcohol. In two thousand three, the Brazilian government banned
alcohol from stadiums because of the enormously high death rate
amongst fans. Before the two thousand fourteen World Cup, FIFA
drew a line in the sand and demanded Brazil change

(34:57):
its laws to permit beer sales and stadiums. I'm sorry
to say, and maybe I look a bit arrogance, but
that's something will not negotiate her. I mean, there will
be and there must be as part of the of
the law, the fact that we are the right to
sell beer. FIFA has forced government after government after government

(35:17):
to bend to its will and change tax laws to
ensure FIFA rakes in every single shiny penny it can.
It is FIFA and it's FIFA subsidiaries that are fully
exempt from any tax whatsoever levied at whatever level, state level,
the municipality level, all sorts of Texas consumption, texas income, texas,
you name it. It's all except when it comes to

(35:39):
human rights. FIFA claims it's powerless, but FIFA has pushed
for changes when it comes to money. Cadre says, we
know when it comes to other things like sponsorship rights,
when it comes to the requirements for the tournament stadiums,
when it comes to all those things around the financial, corporate,

(36:00):
the professional side for FIFA, then in fact you see
that Gutta has bent over backwards to accommodate them. FIFA's
position on Qutars migrant workers has come at a cost,
an avalanche, now a volcano of bad press. The tournament
built moreover on the blood of foreign construction workers. The
other great FIFA scandal, the ugly game. For years, major

(36:25):
sponsors have watched the cut our World Cup descend into
accusations of corruption and appalling labor conditions, as the deaths
of construction workers pile up, with endless scrutiny from human
rights groups and SEP ladders departure. In two thousand and fifteen,
FIFA's new president, Gianni Infantino has and I'll give them
a little bit of credit here, has called for improved

(36:47):
worker conditions. We pulled it as a condition in our
bidding process is rule our competitions, and wherever we go
around the world, we are of course highlighting the need
for protecting human rights. When it comes to the situation

(37:07):
in in Qatar in particular, I think we need to
be fair there as well and admit that a lot
of progress has happened and all the progress in the
conditions of the workers in recent years. With a very
soft nudge from FIFA, Qatar past legislation revamping its employment system.

(37:31):
In theory, workers can now switch jobs without leaving the country.
A new minimum monthly salary is guaranteed and must be
paid electronically, and employers must provide suitable food and accommodations
or pay extra if they don't. But here's the rub.
Enforcement of all these new laws is haphazarded best. Even

(37:55):
with these changes, the mistreatment of workers continues in Qatar.
Thousands of migrant workers are still being exploited, and too
many are dying. There's no denying The two thousand, twenty
two World Cup will be the most technologically advanced World
Cup ever, with its estimated three billion dollars of futuristic

(38:17):
stadiums and transportation infrastructure. It will be a modern marvel.
At the same time, it's a modern human tragedy. FIFA
can do better. FIFA has to do better. This is

(38:39):
a PostScript. The red blood on the brick wall is fake,
but the bullet holes are very much real. The six
by ten ft section of the Lincoln Park garage where
seven Irish bootleggers were murdered by al Capone's South Side
Chicago gang on Valentine's Day nineteen, just one of the

(39:02):
some two thousand rare artifacts and exhibits in the Las
Vegas Mob Museum. The wall, like many other exhibits, helps
tell the story of the world's most notorious gangsters and
organized crime syndicates. You know, the jewel thieves, the cyber hackers,
the Irish and Italian mobsters, the Mexican drug cartels, and

(39:24):
the international soccer executives. This may not fit the perfect
picture of organized crime, but it looks like it. It
feels like it, you know, it tastes like it. That's right.
Among the many criminals and crooks profiled and enshrined in
the Las Vegas Mob Museum, there's a little corner reserve

(39:45):
for the Federation International the Football Association FIFA. Jeff Schumacher,
the vice president of exhibits at the museum, says, FIFA
takes all the boxes for a continuing criminal enterprise. From
our standpoint, twenty years is a pretty good run for
a criminal enterprise. I think some people who came into

(40:06):
the museum may have been surprised to come across our
FIFA exhibit, But once they absorbed the contents of the exhibit,
once they read about what had transpired, and they saw
how the European press in particular had covered the FIFA scandal,
I think they understood why it was a logical fit
for the museum. As you've heard in this series, FIFA's

(40:27):
sometimes criminal and moral and horrendous behavior isn't just centered
around one person or the two thousand and fifteen corruption case.
FIFA started as a racist organization under its European colonial
minded founders, and then became a full fledged criminal enterprise
under its boss Johavalang in the nineteen seventies. It's criminality

(40:49):
only grew and expanded under the mild mannered Sep Bladder
in the last fifty years. The men who have run
FIFA have old right wing military junta's, turned a blind
eye to gross human rights abuses, encourage rampants, sexism and
vulgar misogyny, and oversaw a global system of money laundering,

(41:11):
bribery and financial misdeeds. Today, FIFA would like you to
believe the corruption, the sexism, the racism, the canoodling with
authoritarian regimes, it's all a thing of the past, historical
legacy of those other Let's not talk about them. They're
gone now FIFA leaders, but the US Justice Department and

(41:32):
Swiss prosecutors continue to issue indictments against FIFA and World
Soccer executives in Among those indicted were two former senior
sports executives from twenty first Century Fox and in November
two thousand one, as you heard, step Ladder and former
Way for President Michelle Platini were indicted in Switzerland, though

(41:53):
a Swiss judge has since thrown the indictment out. Today,
Gianni Infantine, current FIFA president, is under investigation by European authorities.
So while the names have changed, FIFA really hasn't. Billions
of people, including myself, will watch the World Cup in

(42:17):
Many of us will think about the time we played
the game as children. We'll put ourselves in the cleats
of our favorite player. We'll be kids again on that
grass pitch, that patch of dirt, just kicking the ball around.
We will not think about those men in their finely
tailored suits grabbing envelopes of cash and exchange for a

(42:37):
crooked vote. But imagine if FIFA did what it said
it should. Imagine if it used the power and passion
for the beautiful game to make a better world. Maybe
this podcast will be a small part of a much
larger effort to bring about some meaningful reforms. As Mustafa
Kadre told me, if sport is meant to be a

(42:59):
public good, if it's meant to be a community activity,
if it's meant to be ours, then we have to
democratize it. It has to represent us. It has to
represent our values. It can't just be a vehicle for
making money. I believe there's hope. The indictments, the success
of women's soccer, the growing voice of players speaking out

(43:19):
against human rights violations. There's hope as long as a
child somewhere, anywhere in the world kicks a ball and
starts to play The Beautiful Game. The Lords of Soccer

(43:45):
Al FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game is an Inside Voices
Media production in conjunction with I Heart Radio. The series
was written and executive produced by Gary Scott and me
Connor Powell, Logan he Tell, and Katie mcmurran provided the
sound design, with assistance from j C. Swaddick and Jake
blue Note. Alec Cowen is our associate producer and Jeffrey

(44:08):
Katz was our story editor. Our fact checker is Alexa
O'Brien and thanks to Miles Gray, who produced the series
for I Heart Radio. If you have any comments or questions,
please reach out. You can find us on Twitter. I'm
at Connor m. Powell and Gary is at Gary Robert
Scott and if you have any stories about FIFA, let

(44:31):
us know. If you like what you hear, please give
us a shout out at the hashtag lords of soccer,