We’re all in agreement that holding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is a bad idea, right? Like, historically bad, since both the oppressive heat and the lack of infrastructure make the tournament such a logistical nightmare that it has to be played in December, with an entire city created from scratch to host the final.…
Aside from the nonstop playoff losses, I imagine the worst thing about being a Washington D.C.-area sports fan is the fact that the Metro closes at 11:30 on weeknights, often before local games—especially playoff baseball—come to an end.
A consultant group serving as the “External Compliance Monitor” for the 2022 FIFA World Cup released its second annual report on Wednesday detailing labor conditions at construction sites in Qatar. The tone of the accompanying press release is positive, touting “a new spirit” and labor law reforms (which are mostly…
Iceland and the Czech Republic met yesterday for a friendly match, which the Czechs won 2-1 over Thor’s Mighty World Cup-Bound Soccer Raiders. The current international break is replete with friendlies scattered around the world, and as such, major clubs have sent their scouts to go check them out. Future 2017-18…
Qatar is a loathsome county built on corruption, a labor system that closely resembles slavery, and the support of the murder of innocent people through the financial backing of terrorists. Qatar is also the owner of French club Paris Saint-Germain, the country’s luxurious and extravagantly gilded source of soft power…
The Aspire Academy’s listed mission statement is to “develop well educated sports champions” and “foster Qatar society realizing a healthy, active lifestyle.” The Qatari government founded Aspire in 2003, building a state-of-the-art sports complex in Doha with the aim of identifying and training athletes from the tiny…
Five Arab countries—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen—have severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, cut off all travel to and from the country, and ordered their citizens to leave the country. According to the BBC, the countries have accused Qatar of destabilizing the region and backing ISIS…
Judging by the looks of the newly renovated Khalifa International Stadium—the first stadium construction project the nation has completed ahead of the 2022 World Cup it will host—Qatar’s massive population of migrant workers, who toil under life-threatening conditions in a working system often described as slave-like,…
FIFA remains committed to hosting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where a projected 7,000 slaves will die in the process of constructing facilities funded by Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Anheuser-Busch. But the atrocious human rights situation in that country extends beyond the laborers shanghaied into building an event…
Riders from Etixx-Quickstep have won eight of the past 10 Tours of Qatar. The race’s crosswinds and wide roads are perfect for the classics-focused squad, and they’ve cleaned up. But they won’t be going this year, because the race’s owners are unhappy with their costume changes.
M.I.A., no stranger to sports-related lawsuits, has been threatened by French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain that, unless she removes scenes of her wearing the modified PSG jersey above from her “Borders” music video, the club will sue her for damaging their reputation.
Sometimes it’s easy to get wrapped up in FIFA’s more bureaucratic forms of corruption and forget that the biggest crime by far that soccer’s governing body has committed was aiding and abetting the workplace atrocities that are so prevalent in Qatar.
Before Swiss agents rolled up on Zurich’s Baur au Lac hotel, snatched a handful of top FIFA execs, and put in motion the series of events that would culminate in their president’s resignation, soccer’s governing body seemed pretty much omnipotent. That day has changed, thankfully, and people are making moves.
The Gulf Cooperation Council—an intergovernmental body made up of a handful of Middle-Eastern nations—is sick and damn tired of the Western media’s continued harping on all the terrible shit going on in relation to the Qatar World Cup. They will not stand for it anymore. As proof, they’ve called on the media of their…
If you expected this week’s sham re-election of Sepp Blatter after a massive federal corruption takedown to be the final straw in corporate slave sponsors’ relationship with FIFA, you have far too optimistic a view of the world. McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Visa, and other FIFA sponsors are smiling and…
The Washington Post has put together a chart illustrating the body counts of workers involved in construction for the last four Olympics and two World Cups, and compared them to the reported death toll for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
As the Justice Department arrested or indicted 14 FIFA and media officials in dramatic early morning raids, Swiss authorities announced a criminal investigation of their own, into allegations of corruption and bribery related to the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. FIFA says it will not…
The 2022 Qatar World Cup will be brought to you by Coca-Cola on the backs of slave workers, many of whom hail from Nepal. These workers live in filth and work in terrifyingly dangerous conditions; their efforts to build the McDonald’s-funded event will result in one dead worker for every 90 seconds of every…
Just like those Germans a couple weeks ago, a crew of British journalists investigating the living and working conditions of the laborers tasked with constructing the (really cool!) infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar were arrested, had their property confiscated, and were forbidden from leaving the…
