Unless FIFA acts I’ll be forever ashamed of the game that I love

From its very first days back in 1930 football’s World Cup has attracted it’s causes and conundrums. There is a strange rhythm to it all. Its almost as if football and the global caravan that follows it only has the capacity to focus on one issue at a time. Because that’s what usually happens. Every four years the world’s best footballing nations gather and somehow manage to bring with them a global media focus on one single issue. In 1978, Argentina were crowned champions at home just two years into the military junta taking over in Buenos Aires. In 1994 the question was the same one now being posed by football franchise owning David Beckham, ‘Can soccer conquer the US?’ Fast forward to 2010 and it was whether South Africa was still a monochrome country or had Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation truly come of age. And with just 66 days to go to this years World Cup a light has been shone on Brazil’s favelas.

The 2022 tournament in Qatar is already different to all of it’s predecessors in lots of ways. It’s the first time the tournament has visited the Middle East. And even though a rescheduling wasn’t contained in their winning bid it seems likely to be the first to take place during Europe’s winter. But what already makes it stand out is that a full eight years before it kicks off the world is spoiled for choice of Qatari controversies.

The claims of bribery in the bidding process will drag on and as Labour’s Shadow Sports Minister, Clive Efford has said, “Fifa cannot hide from these  allegations.” If they are proven it would throw the entire thing up in the air.

But what is in little doubt is the mistreatment of migrant workers who are arriving in the country to build the most expensive sports stadiums ever constructed. The tiny nation on the Arabian peninsula has an indigenous population of little more then a quarter of a million but is swollen to almost ten times that number by foreign workers. Many tradesman and labourers arrive from Nepal, Bangladesh, Ghana and Kenya in search of wages they couldn’t dream of earning at home. They travel to Qatar carrying contracts that they hope will help them send money back to the families they sign up not to go back to for two years.

Many of the workers live in vast workers camps on the edge of Doha. Over the past few days I visited some of these camps with the International TUC. What I saw will always stick in my mind. These conditions cannot persist as the stadiums start to be built. Unless FIFA acts I’ll be forever ashamed of the game that I love.

As I walked through the camps during my unannounced visits almost every worker I met had a story to tell. But they only spoke to me through my multilingual interpreters on the condition that no-one from their company was nearby. As we spoke many of them looked nervously over their shoulders to see if they could trust those workmates within earshot.
I met workers trapped in Qatar who couldn’t get home because their employer had seized their passport as soon as they arrived. Others had the contracts that they signed up to ripped up by the companies who brought them to the country. Their wages had been cut by up to 50% and they were given a food allowance of just £1 a day. Thousands lived in cramped filthy conditions with eight men crammed into a space hardly big enough for a child’s bedroom. I met one man who had been stuck essentially stateless for five years because he had been left abandoned by his company who had left the country and taken his passport and paperwork with them. Illegal for him to stay and impossible for him to travel, he was left in a stateless limbo.

Much of this is down to the determined abuse by some employers and a kafala system which allows the companies to own their workers every move. There are many examples of good companies doing the right thing. But there are huge numbers exploiting the men currently building the roads, railways and hotels that will make the tournament possible. And as the stadiums begin to take shape FIFA, British footballing authorities and the British government must act.

I met with the people in charge of Qatar 2022 including Hassan Al Thawadi, the Sheffield educated head of the Supreme Committee. During our lengthly discussions some big promises of change were made. I was told about new plans on workers rights and changes to the kafala system.

Scotland and England like to think that they helped give modern football to the wider world. With that sense of history there comes an extra responsibility to stand up and speak out. The British government can also ease the pressure by extending the Work in Freedom programme to help construction workers at risk of falling into forced labour.

Until now the treatment of these migrant workers has been the ugly secret of the beautiful game. If the abuse continues this will be a World Cup that shames the history and romance of a tournament that has brought us the footballing genius of Puskas, Cruyff and Pele. It’s time to act. We need to protect the game we love. More importantly its time to stand up for the workers whose dreams of a better life are being stolen.