La Coupe du Monde du Moyen-Orient

The choice of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup was both a questionable and contested choice because of the need to build big stadiums in a small area and the employment of a workforce subject to terrible working conditions. Not to mention the carbon footprint of stadiums that will have to be air-conditioned. But Qatar is also the difficult choice in a footballing area, the Middle East, divided by the conflicts of the 20th century and which has recently converted to football, notably through oil money. It also reveals the preference of FIFA’s leaders for the emerging countries that have been chosen since 2010 to organise the supreme competition (South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar). A space that also makes little room for women and is trapped in FIFA’s continental logic: major football countries such as Egypt and Turkey would have deserved to be chosen if they were not part of CAF and UEFA respectively, and not of the AFC like Qatar

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