The case for re-running the bidding process for the 2022 World Cup is strengthening by the week.
It seems now to be a distinct possibility Qatar won the bid corruptly. Allegations made yesterday that disgraced former Fifa executive committee member Mohamed Bin Hammam made payments to football officials in return for votes for Qatar, appear damning, though they must be fully investigated; the Qatari bid team denies any wrongdoing. Even without this latest turn of events, however, the choice of this tiny, extremely wealthy Middle Eastern state to host the world's biggest single-event sporting competition is looking, at best, badly misjudged.
First, there is the country's searing summer heat, which in June and July regularly reaches 50ºC and poses a health risk to players and spectators, but the problems go much further than that. There is also the country's shameful treatment of migrant workers, men from Africa and Asia who are being deployed in their thousands to build new roads, hotels and other infrastructure for fans, players and officials, including the eight stadia the competition depends upon. The Qatari government's own figures show nearly 1000 migrants, from Nepal, India and Bangladesh, died in 2012 and 2013. Ominously, the figures suggest that in 2012 alone, 246 died from "sudden cardiac death". Another 35 died in falls and 28 committed suicide. To put this into perspective, the London Olympic Park was built without a single death. There are thought to have been eight deaths in the construction of World Cup venues in Brazil - eight too many, but a fraction of the deaths among migrants in Qatar.
The shadow international development secretary, Jim Murphy, has led impassioned calls for Fifa and national football associations to put pressure on Qatar to improve the sub-human conditions in which foreign workers toil. Hundreds of thousands of workers live in camps. Workers are brought to the country on the promise of rich financial rewards, only to have their passports taken away and their contracts torn up, putting them completely at the mercy of their employers. Many are not paid for months. For the World Cup jamboree to descend on hotels and stadia constructed at such human cost would shame the game.
If it is proven that Qatar was chosen to run the World Cup in 2022 as a result of improper payments, then of course the bidding contest must be re-run, but the ramifications go beyond such immediate practicalities. It would also disgrace Fifa. Such a finding would surely be the death knell to the 16-year Fifa presidency of Sepp Blatter. Mr Blatter has appeared complacent at times in response to allegations of corruption. For all that he has belatedly instituted reforms, that impression will prove hard to shake off. It would be almost inconceivable that he could hold on if there were a scandal of such magnitude on his watch.
If Fifa and the World Cup bidding process were to emerge with any credibility, evidence of real change would be required.
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