Doha. They call it the World Cup, but I don’t know if it’s worth believing anymore.
Football has been pumped so full of money and politics that it is about to explode.
Maybe now is the right time. Maybe it will be.
The day before, I had driven into downtown Doha from the west, to see how the tallest building of the young nation stretched into the sky.
Aspire Tower. 300 meters high, cost a few billion. The centerpiece of the sports complex and sports project in which Qatar has now invested 20 years and a pharaonic sum of money.
I aspire. ambition. One is climbing, the other is falling.
It’s been 12 long years since that snowy day in Zurich when Sepp Blatter opened an envelope and sent a football to an unknown destination.
Qatar has taken on a whole new look since then. The soccer ball is so swollen that it is cracking at the seams.
But at some point it all ends. At some point, even the most inflated balls and balloons will explode.
I myself fell in love with football a little over 35 years ago, in the mid-80s.
Since then, it has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger until now, it is no longer possible to distinguish where it begins and ends, and what it really looks like. First, it cemented its place as the world’s biggest sport, then became bigger than all the other sports combined only to gradually slide into a sort of unholy intersection between cultural powerhouse, ultra-thrifty entertainment industry, and geopolitical lubricant of the new millennium.
But at some point it all ends. At some point, you get to the point where you’ve swallowed so many sweets that it’s not good enough anymore, but you feel like throwing up.
The toilets cost at least 2.5 billion crowns
Today’s best football is completely lacking in size and proportions. It always depends on how you count, but the figure that is often cited is that the preparations for the World Cup here in Qatar cost at least 2.5 billion kronor.
I lost a lot of money in all zeros – 2.5 trillion, 2.5 million – and you already know that the human price is higher than the economic price.
Today we go to the so-called Home Stadium for the premiere – it cost about 7.5 billion, architect Albert Speer – before it’s time for the first visit to the final arena the day after tomorrow. It is the city around which a new city is being built, a city that was not there at all when Qatar won the World Cup for the first time.
Modern pyramids of Khufu. A symbol of abundance and an inequality that is impossible to reconcile with – but nonetheless a perfectly logical consequence of football as it is now.
For my part, I would have found it much easier to relate to this World Cup if the tournament had been an obvious exception, an almost incomprehensible anomaly infiltrated by an already disposed corruption clique at FIFA.
But this is not the case.
Europeans are very easy to calculate
Everything follows each other and everything is connected. From the inaccessible boardrooms of Paris Saint-Germain, Man City and Newcastle to the sweatshops in Southeast Asia where our footballs, shirts and shoes are made. From our Swedish Chamber of Commerce here at shabby West Point in Doha to all the European governments now lining up to get their commodities taps in Qatar before winter sets in.
Boycott their toilet and beg for gas.
I spend the afternoon walking around downtown Doha. The newly built old town center will become the center of gravity of the entire water cycle, and there is at least some kind of party feel there. Mexicans and Argentines are the most numerous and loudest. Then followed the North Africans, Saudis and – indeed – increasingly larger and more chaotic groups of Qataris.
On the other hand, Europeans are very easy to calculate.
In one way, all this is a salutary reminder that the world does not revolve around us, in another way perhaps it is also a clear indication of where football is headed in the future.
Late in the afternoon, I had coffee with a FIFA official I knew from before, a kind man trying to do good in an ailing organization.
According to him, the Highlanders are generally unconcerned with the criticism surrounding the tournament. We’ve only really heard of it in the West, and most of the main patrons are Asians these days anyway. Already in the last World Cup, 1.6 billion Asians made up nearly half of the viewers who followed the tournament on TV, and this time the proportion will be even greater.
It may also release an inflated balloon
On site here in Qatar, tickets are still available for purchase for most group stage matches, but this is not seen as a major concern. Although there are very few Germans and Englishmen, there are plenty of passionate Indians who can instead cheer their national team if need be.
The situation seems very consistent when it comes to soccer decisions and direction. FIFA now has 212 member countries, all of whom have the same voting rights regardless of size or footballing traditions. For every embarrassing League of Nations that causes problems, there are many others that ask less questions.
At some point, it all came to an end, and I never felt the breaking point in my life with football. Perhaps the Qatar World Cup will turn out to be the beginning of the end of the football era, and there may be many of us on the verge of losing the will that some kind of recession is imminent.
I don’t really think so.
Instead, football’s economic center of gravity is moving more and more east, but we face a future where China will soon host the World Cup and the Premier League will be global rather than European.
And where do we go next?
I have always been very firm in my belief that the whole of football should hold together, that it should be possible to draw straight lines between the corner quarter and the square for a World Cup final. Today, it is getting harder and harder to shake off the instinct to stop participating in top-flight football at all, and to stop fighting to keep it in some form of grassroots and ball-bending form.
Perhaps it would be best to let this inflated balloon float away into the sun only to burn up and perish at last. Everything mostly feels like some sort of Dionysian orgy before the Empire was about to fall.
At some point, it all comes to an end, and it could be that the age of football is now over.
It’s also a feeling to face the world championship with him. He’s not the one I wish I had.