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This is a conversation with Justin Salhani of ‘Oh My Goal’ and Musa Okwonga (his 4th time on the pod) of ‘Stadio‘ about football, politics and human rights. We talked about the upcoming world cup in Qatar, the role of dirty money in football (including Russian, Emirati and Saudi) and what might come next.
This book review originally appeared in the Markaz Review.
It was in 2010 that the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) announced that Qatar would host the 2022 World Cup. Almost immediately, the selection of the gas-rich Gulf Arab state with a population of just over one million people ignited controversy. It led to a shakeup within FIFA itself that blighted the reputation of its president, Sepp Blatter, and ultimately led to the end of his tenure. Yet the controversy has continued. With the World Cup having just kicked off, there seems to be less attention paid to the teams and players as there is to the hosts.
Football in the Middle East is published by Hurst.
When discussing Qatar as a host for the World Cup, it can be difficult to know where to stand. There’s been a barrage of both good faith and bad faith criticism. Good faith arguments tend to center migrant workers and violations of their rights. Bad faith criticisms might include Orientalist or racist undertones. Sometimes, there are good faith criticisms of the bad faith criticisms. Yet often the bad faith criticisms are highlighted to dismiss any, and all, criticism.
Read MoreOriginally published in Stadio
There’s an iconic photo of a young Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema, and Hatem Ben Arfa taken shortly after they’ve won the u-17 European Championship for France in 2004. Three young Frenchmen of Arab - North African descent. This photo once signalled the future of French football; but, one by one, these three players fell out of the national team’s limelight. The most enigmatic of the trio, and the one I think about the most, is Ben Arfa.
When Ben Arfa emerged from Clairefontaine, he was considered the most skilled player in the institution's history. Coaches said his potential exceeded that of other graduates like Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka and that his technical ability was possibly even greater than that of Zinedine Zidane. There were high hopes for all three players in this photo. But none were as high as the hopes for Ben Arfa.
A couple of years ago, Ben Arfa signed for his hometown club Paris Saint-Germain. He’d just come off a season where he propelled OGC Nice into fourth place in the league through a series of his signature plays: dazzling solo goals after mazy runs past multiple defenders. Yet his mercurial talents didn’t fit Unai Emery’s system, and he was relegated to training with the PSG reserves.
Read MoreOriginally published on the Athletic
Kathryn Mayorga has accused Cristiano Ronaldo of raping her. Der Spiegel published her interview on Saturday along with copious corroborating documentary details. But you would hardly know it from the Italian media’s coverage.
Mayorga’s allegation, that Ronaldo attacked her at a party in Las Vegas in June of 2009, has spread far and wide on social media. There were vows of support for Mayorga and, as is all too common in these cases, reflexive and insistent defenses of the famous accused man. But, in Italy, the national media largely limited its coverage to Ronaldo’s absence from the match against Young Boys (for which he was serving a red card suspension). As has often been the case since his 100 million Euro transfer to Juventus, Ronaldo continues to dominate headlines in Italy. Which headlines, however, depend entirely on where you look.
This shouldn’t necessarily come as a shock. The Juventus media machine is notorious in its efforts to control the narrative about the team and its players, and it is, unsurprisingly, eager to protect its asset. Similarly, Ronaldo’s reportedly aggressive team of lawyers has already threatened legal action over the story.
Read MoreOriginally published in the Athletic
Mesut Özil sent an aftershock to the earthquake that was Germany’s disastrous World Cup campaign when he announced that he would be stepping away from the national team last month. The five-time German footballer of the year cited racism and scapegoating from the German media, fans, and the German Soccer Federation (DFB) officials as the reason he would stop representing his country of birth.
But Özil’s claims seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
“I think Mesut himself knows that racism within the national team and the DFB does not exist,” Toni Kroos, Özil’s international teammate, recently told German paper Bild.
This comes after another teammate in Thomas Müller said that “racism inside the national team never was an issue.”
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