This article has printed in “Tejarat_e_Farda” magazine, Dated: Saturday, December 25, 2022.

https://www.tejaratefarda.com/fa/tiny/news-42923

The Story of Two Developments

What Lessons Does Qatar’s Hosting Hold for Us?

Vahid Namazi / Sports Writer and Journalist

Act One: January 2011 – Doha Airport

The hustle and bustle of the passengers has died down. Everyone has collected their suitcases and left. It’s just me and my photographer friend left, along with a conveyor belt that’s still groaning and turning after an hour of operation to deliver the luggage. I say to my friend: “Let’s go. My suitcase is lost. Good thing we didn’t check in your camera bag.” He shrugs and goes off to smoke a cigarette. It might be his seventh since we disembarked. I go back and argue with the flight information desk for the Tehran-Doha route. They say: “Wait. It’ll come.” I head back to the conveyor belt and say loudly: “Is this how you plan to host the World Cup?” The conveyor belt stops. My friend says: “They’re going to come and take us away now.” I reply: “Don’t affraid. This isn’t Tehran.” I pick up my backpack and head toward the exit. I’m sleepy. I haven’t slept for two nights. One night I was busy finalizing the newspaper’s special edition for the Asian Cup, and the other night was spent packing gear, suitcase, and flying. Oh, the suitcase. I’m thinking of calling Tehran and asking them to send me a few sets of clothes for these two or three weeks when the continuous beeping of the conveyor belt snaps me out of my daze. Beep… Beep… And the conveyor belt starts turning like a snake coiling around a tree to digest its prey. Once. Twice. And my suitcase appears. Without a handle, without wheels, and torn. I look at it. My friend says: “Pick it up and let’s go.” He reaches out, grabs the battered thing from the belt, and places it at my feet. This time, I shout: “Is this how you plan to host the World Cup? Even this Asian Cup is too much for you.” We exit the airport and get lost in the clamor of little Doha. A city struggling between tradition and modernity. A lovable city that resembles a peaceful oasis in the desert. A city whose officials are supposed to host the Asian Cup, and now, more than my suitcase or the Asian Cup, I’m thinking about hosting the 2022 World Cup. Of course, they do host the Asian Cup, but not “like this.” The Qataris, with a worthy hosting of another continental event (after the 2006 Asian Games), show that they have serious plans for the World Cup 11 years later.

Act Two: July 2014 – Asaluyeh; South Pars Gas Field

Welcome to the world’s largest gas field: polluted air, temperatures above 50 degrees, and humid. What am I doing here? Four years ago, around these same days, I was in Johannesburg, right in the middle of the 2010 World Cup, preparing reports and news from the first African Cup. It was there that Sepp Blatter, the then-president of FIFA, in the annual congress of the world’s largest organization—whose members even outnumber those of the United Nations—promised to bring the World Cup to lands that had never before had the opportunity to host this grand event. It was there that he spoke of FIFA’s gaze toward new “markets.” A few months later, in December 2010, Qatar won the hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup from the United States (its direct competitor) and other bidding candidates. Of course, the more accurate statement is: Qatar bought the World Cup hosting from FIFA. It’s even said that they hired Kevin Chalker, a former CIA officer, to spy on other candidates and read the hands of the 22 members of FIFA’s executive committee who selected the host. Now, on the shores of the ever-Persian Gulf, I’m accompanying a friend who’s bargaining with the managers of one of the liquid gas loading docks to facilitate faster loading conditions. I don’t understand much of what they’re saying, except that the air is so hot that even the gas transport pipes from the refinery to the dock are gasping for breath. The ship’s tank pressure has dropped, and someone needs to order the flare connected to the dock to be lit so that the pumped gas burns for an hour, normalizing the tank pressure and speeding up the loading. They haggle and argue for two or three hours over one hour of gas flaring. A bit further away, in the Asaluyeh gas refineries, dozens of flares are burning, wasting excess gases because there’s no capacity for storage, transfer, or sale. And this is the most blatant contradiction possible. Like many similar cases that happen every day across this vast land. But about 300 kilometers further south, the refineries of a territory even smaller than 1,500 square kilometers of Tehran Province are sucking up and selling the gas from the shared field with all their might. The oval-shaped 9,700 square kilometer gas field, 62% of which belongs to Qatar (6,000 sq km with 21% of the world’s gas reserves) and 38% to Iran (3,700 sq km with 8% of the world’s gas reserves). Moreover, the 1.9% slope of the land tilting toward Qatar makes extracting gas condensates even harder for Iran. Sanctions are the main excuse for Iran’s problems, but here, in addition to sanctions, the land is truly crooked. According to the former CEO of Iran’s National Oil Company, Qatar invested about 400 billion dollars in its oil and gas industries over the 20-year period from 1989 (the end of the imposed war) to 2009, extracting as much as possible from South Pars (Qatar’s North Dome), while Iran’s share in the same period, at best, was only about 70 billion dollars. Here in Asaluyeh, the Pars Jonoubi Jam football team begs the oil company every day for a few hundred million tomans in budget, and 300 kilometers further away, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, a former professional tennis player and senior manager of the “Qatar Sports Investment Foundation”—affiliated with Qatar’s Ministry of Finance and National Olympic Committee—after executing a joint project with Barcelona FC and spending enormous sums on financial support for this football giant, is preparing to buy France’s Paris Saint-Germain club the following year and launch another major project to showcase Qatar’s power to the world.

Now, eight years have passed since those days, and Qatar is officially hosting the World Cup. Paris Saint-Germain, with Messi, Mbappé, and its other stars, has come within a step of conquering the UEFA Champions League multiple times. And, of course, the Pars Jonoubi Jam team, in the mid-table of the Azadegan League, dreams of its happy days in the Premier League. Yes, in today’s world, big differences are created by small distances.

Act Three: October 1977 – Tehran

“Iran has volunteered to host the 1990 World Cup”; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi reads the big headline at the top of 10 Etelaat newspapers. Besides Iran, only the Soviet Union is a candidate to host the World Cup. The “new project” has begun. After Tehran’s noisy hosting of the 1974 Asian Games, the dream of holding a world event will soon become a reality. Tehran has two modern stadiums, plans to build another in the capital and several modern ones in Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Ahvaz and Rasht are also on the table. Perhaps the Russians can be persuaded to step aside in favor of Iran. Everything is ready for the World Cup to come to the Middle East… and suddenly all those dreams are dashed by the emergence of domestic problems, increasing public discontent, the rise of the revolutionary movement and a budget deficit, and Iran withdraws its application. Five years earlier, with the support of Britain and Saudi Arabia, Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani seized power in small, desert Qatar, succeeding his cousin, who was overthrown in a coup while hunting in Iran. The new emir soon began to implement reforms, curbing the corruption of the Al Thani family and launching social development programs, including housing, health, education, and retirement. His “project” had begun; with the overthrow of the royal regime of the large northern neighbor across the Persian Gulf and the new government’s involvement in the imposed war, rebuilding the post-war ruins, and trying to reach a point of stability, the southern marginalized, sitting on the golden throne of oil and gas, are pushing the gas bar and building their small countries. In 1995, Khalifa bin Hamad gave way to his son, Hamad bin Khalifa, but the roadmap was the same as the one his father had laid: Qatar’s approach to development is a special one. They are targeting social and cultural development, and along with the implementation of multi-decade-long oil and gas industry development programs and construction and development of the country, they have a glimpse of a “large non-industrial project” that can make a small country famous.

Qatar is a country of three million people, most of whom are foreign workers with minimum wages. The real size of the Qatari economy is about $300 billion, of which nearly two-thirds is the value added of the gas and oil industries. It is about a quarter of the size of our economic pie, but since Iran’s population is more than 25 times that of Qatar, the real GDP per capita (PPP) of Qataris is about six times that of Iranians. A figure that places them in the first or second place of the most prosperous people on the planet, depending on the method of calculation. But how did Qatar progress on the path of development?

The story begins in the 1900s, when Qatar was occupied by Britain. At that time, Qatar’s main industries were fishing and pearling. In the early 1920s, when the pearling industry collapsed, the people of the country suffered from poverty, malnutrition and disease. But the discovery of oil reserves in the 1930s and the North Dome gas field (South Pars) in the 1970s changed everything. Of course, since at that time gas could only be transported through large gas pipelines and Qatar was miles away from places where gas was used, natural gas was not very profitable, so Shell, which had discovered the gas field, gave up on it. But everything changed significantly after Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa took power. The emir came to power with a very clear idea: the future of Qatar. He undertook many tasks for this future. He decided to invest in an underdeveloped and scarce technology: liquefaction technology, to enable the transport of natural gas through ships such as large tankers. He succeeded in this, and Qatar began exporting LNG for the first time. Because of this huge investment, Qatar is now one of the largest LNG exporters in the world. And today it has gained a competitive advantage in gas extraction. Qatar has been able to significantly reduce the cost of extraction, for example, a methane tanker filled with LNG launched in Qatar is four times cheaper than when it was launched in the United States. This is the great secret of the Qatari economy. But oil and gas were not the only keys to Qatar’s success. A country not only needs to exploit resources, but also to use the money it generates well, otherwise these resources will be a blessing rather than a curse. What distinguishes Qatar from many countries with large reserves of natural resources is the long-term vision of its rulers.

Qatar’s development-minded rulers have tried to avoid the scourge of the resource curse, when abundance leads to economic distortions and low growth, through various measures.

After the discovery of gas in the 1970s and the country’s independence, the Qataris, like the Emiratis and unlike the Kuwaitis, put public investment on their agenda. These investments, both in transportation infrastructure and in the oil and gas industries and their supply chains, will increase their resilience to future energy market fluctuations and will also be a factor in Qataris’ future income.

In principle, the development perspective in developing or less developed countries has common aspects and of course, it is different, and in a regional survey, this diversity can be clearly seen that the development models of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, despite having various commonalities, have many structural differences. Although these countries share the same goals of improving infrastructure, increasing the quality of social and urban services, opening up the political space (such as what happened with the succession of Sheikh Tamim, son of Sheikh Hamad, the former Emir of Qatar, in 2013, or the unchallenged rise to power of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman), and actively participating in the foreign policy space (such as what Qatar has been practicing for years as a regional political hub, or the constant lobbying of bin Salman and other countries in the region to repair the gap in their political relations with world and Middle Eastern powers), each also follows its own unique development model. While the rulers of the Emirates, and especially the Emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, have taken advantage of his father’s idea of transforming Jebel Ali Port into the largest port in the Middle East, reduced the share of oil revenues in their economy, and while developing tourism programs, they have transformed their city into a tourism hub and a flight connection point in the world. With projects such as holding a World Expo in Dubai with six million people and “Citizen World”, they are thinking about starting a trip to Mars, or Saudi Arabia’s Bin Salman dreams of building a vertical city of several hundred kilometers deep in the desert, “Neom”, and holding the Winter Olympics there, the development-oriented approach specific to Qatar completely bypasses the path of cultural-social-economic development.

Act Four; June 2008 – Doha Airport

He had returned from the FIFA Congress in Australia in his magnificent private jet. The FIFA president had announced that the tiny Middle Eastern nation of Qatar was a candidate to host the World Cup. The big challenge had begun, and Sheikh Hamad, the Emir of Qatar, was waiting for him in his palace, the Diwan. He was Mohammed bin Hammam, a veteran businessman, the head of the Asian Football Confederation since 2002, a member of the FIFA executive committee since 1996, and, more importantly, a close friend of Sepp Blatter. When the dream of hosting a dazzling event came to the mind of the Emir and his aides, “football” was one of their top priorities to make Qatar famous and ultimately develop their small but very wealthy country. They had hosted the 2006 Asian Games in a magnificent manner, creating such a memory for athletes, journalists, members of the Olympic Council of Asia and senior managers of the International Olympic Committee that they would never forget the trip to Doha. It was then that the Emir conceived a bigger dream: hosting the World Cup, and his wife, Sheikha Muza bint Nasser, and his son, Tamim, were his main supporters and supporters in making this dream come true. They raised the issue with the best person they could: Mohammed bin Hammam. And so it was that he became the Qatari special envoy to convince FIFA to hold the World Cup in Qatar.

Sheikh Hamad once met with Blatter about it. The project was “too big” for little Qatar. Blatter beat the Emir to the punch and suggested that Qatar, along with neighboring countries like the UAE, submit a joint hosting plan to FIFA. But even the ambitious emirs of the Gulf countries considered this dream too big for their ambitions, telling Sheikh Hamad: “This is madness. This is nothing but trouble for us. The world will laugh at us.” But the Emir had made up his mind. So Bin Hammam launched the main plan: the back door. The way that always works, he paved the way for his small country with a lot of lobbying and spending a lot of dollars. Blatter’s power was waning. Even Bin Hammam himself had announced that FIFA needed a new face. Everyone was ready for change, but the real change was happening behind the scenes. In a strange twist, Bin Hammam opened the way for his old friend to become president again, and Blatter became FIFA president again. The Emir had handed the presidency chair, which was slipping from under Blatter’s feet, back to him with Bin Hammam’s hand, and now it was the Emir’s turn to repay the favor. Sheikh Hamad and Blatter met again, and Blatter said what the Emir wanted: “You can rest assured; we’re bringing the World Cup to Qatar.”

In July 2008, a month after Qatar was announced as a candidate for the 2022 World Cup at the FIFA Congress in Sydney, Qatar’s rulers unveiled their country’s major development project, the “Qatar National Vision 2030,” a national vision aimed at transforming Qatar into a fully developed country by 2030, providing high standards of living for generations to come, and its four main pillars were: environmental development, economic development, social development, and human development. Sheikh Tamim, the then Crown Prince and current Emir of Qatar, wrote in the introduction to the program: “Wise political leaders know in which direction their societies should develop and balance the interests of the present generation with those of future generations. The well-being of our children and those yet to be born requires that we use our wealth wisely. Qatar must continue to invest in its people so that everyone can fully participate in economic, social, and political development. Qatar should invest in world-class infrastructure… .

The main lifeblood of this program is the advanced petroleum and natural gas industries that underpin Qatar’s economy. Continued investment by foreign partners in the Al Shamal (South Pars) gas field provides the resources needed to implement the national vision. While Assaluyeh languishes in its numerous undeveloped phases due to Iran’s isolation from the international community, Qatar has partnered with Shell, Total, ExxonMobil, Eni and others on the Al Shamal field to develop the $29 billion gas field, which will increase LNG production to 110 million tons by 2027. If Qatar’s large northern neighbor has pursued unconventional development plans, the small southern island is making its grand dreams a reality.

Read again these statements from the introduction to Qatar’s Vision 2030; “The well-being of our children and those yet to be born requires that we use our wealth wisely… Qatar must invest in world-class infrastructure.” While Qatar’s top leaders are trying to pave the way for their country’s progress by pursuing the usual policies of wise rulers, politics has no place in Qatar’s main development axes, where only environmental development, economic development, social development, and human development are important. A strong, developed country must have an efficient workforce, a strong society, a vibrant economy, and a developed climate before it can have a progressive domestic and global policy.

Accordingly, Sheikh Hamad bought Qatar the hosting of the World Cup by paying huge sums of money. Undoubtedly, their work is reprehensible and even evil. Mohammed bin Hammam, a well-known football executive, was banned from football for life after his role in the process was exposed, paying huge bribes to the heads of various national football associations to encourage them to retain Blatter and then advising and paying members of the FIFA executive committee to vote in favor of Qatar hosting the tournament (although the Court of Arbitration for Sport later overturned this decision). He almost sacrificed himself, but he put his country’s development train on the World Cup track to help make progress.

Hosting the World Cup is a platform for the all-round development of the small country of Qatar. As Sheikh Tamim wrote, “investing in world-class infrastructure” in sports began with Qatar’s entry into European football; Qatar Airways paid $163 million in sponsorship to Barcelona in 2010, and the government-affiliated tourism organization bought Paris Saint-Germain with an ambitious direct investment of more than $1 billion. The next step was to start construction projects and prepare the country to host the world’s biggest sporting event. When a country wins the hosting of a major sporting event like the Olympics or the World Cup, it usually has significant existing infrastructure that needs to be improved or, in the worst case, built several stadiums and developed accommodation, transportation and communication infrastructure. For example, the United States spent about $500 million to host the 1994 World Cup, while South Africa spent about $4 billion and Brazil $15 billion to host the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, respectively. But Qatar’s case was different from all previous hosts. How much did a country with virtually no infrastructure to host the World Cup have to spend?

While, according to Nasser Al-Khater, the director of the 2022 World Cup organizing committee, the World Cup and its surrounding opportunities, such as the tourism industry, will bring about $20 billion to the Qatari economy, Sheikh Hamad’s bold gamble to bring the World Cup to the Persian Gulf has cost $220 billion or even more; about $15 to $20 billion of this budget is allocated to the construction and equipping of the stadiums hosting the World Cup, and the remaining $200 billion is solely related to the construction and creation of various urban and development-oriented infrastructures; airports, transportation lines, metros, residential areas, urban and intercity roads, etc. These include. A country that did not have metro lines now has one of the most modern metros in the region at a cost of $70 billion. Other national infrastructures have been developed or created in the same way. Even the seemingly voluntary abdication of Sheikh Hamad at the age of 62 in 2013 and the accession of his son Sheikh Tamim as the first person of Qatar was somehow part of this development program and future vision.

The truth of the matter was; those who knew that their country needed a young and bold leader for its comprehensive progress and development, and who knew that many of Qatar’s most talented citizens in the fields of sports and technology were migrating to the United States and Europe, took the huge risk of a $200 billion difference in the cost and benefit of hosting the World Cup in order to prevent the loss of their great social capital by building world-class facilities within their country. Yes, this is how reverse migration takes place; build your country, prepare the infrastructure for progress, and feel the desire for the active presence of the elite and their efforts to develop their country with your own body and soul.

That is why I have repeatedly said and written that football is not a phenomenon, but a “hyper-phenomenon.” It can bring about convergence and development. It can bring together the people of a country and the entire world. In addition to producing the huge economic profits expected from any modern industry, it can also create “social added value” and contribute to the progress of a country. George Orwell said: “Football is war without bloodshed.” Perhaps the great writer’s words would not have seemed out of place in the last century, but undoubtedly, based on everything that has been said in this article, and relying on all the evidence available in today’s world (which considers globalization, altruism, overcoming unilateralism and creating wealth based on providing a quality product as the main principles), football is a “phenomenon” that, in the words of Pele, the legendary Brazilian legend: “helped to make the world a better place by uniting nations and giving a sense of purpose and pride to disadvantaged children like me.”

What creates big differences in today’s world are small gaps; gaps in how to think, trust in new phenomena, investment in infrastructure and comprehensive development at the social and cultural levels. Here, one is Qatar, which after hosting the 2006 Asian Games, the 2011 Asian Cup, and the 2022 World Cup, has now secured the hosting of the 2027 Asian Cup and the 2030 Asian Games. And the other is us, who, without the support and infrastructure necessary to host a major event, are lifting a huge stone, becoming candidates to host the 2011, 2019, and 2027 Asian Cups, and each time losing the match to our small southern neighbors, only to stare back at the same faded photos of our hosting of the Asian Games 50 years ago and go our own way.

Resources:

1- Mohammad Hossein Panahi (2015), “Cultural Development: The Necessity of Economic, Social and Political Development”. Quarterly Journal of Welfare and Social Development Planning, No. 22

2- Kamran Mosleh, Farid Dehghani, Mohammad Reza Zami, Reza Mirza Ebrahimi (2008), “Chapter One”, Optimal Use of Gas Resources in Iran, by the Efforts of the Ofogh Energy Management Institute, (FIPA Publishing), Tehran: Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly

3- Mehdi Afsharnik (March 29, 2009), “The Necessity of Accelerating the Development of the Country’s Joint Oil and Gas Fields”. Naft News, ILNA

4- Etelaat Newspaper, No. 15451 (November 29, 1977).

5- Suderman, Alan (November 23, 2021). “World Cup host Qatar used ex-CIA officer to spy on FIFA”. Associated Press.

6- “A brief history of PSG”. ESPN.com. 17 August 2012. Archived from the original on 29 June 2021. Retrieved 16 December 2020.

7- Toth, Anthony. “Qatar: Historical Background”. A Country Study: Qatar (Helen Chapin Metz, editor).

Library of Congress Federal Research Division (January 19693). This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

8- Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, “The Ugly Game; The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup”, (Simon & Schuster Ltd; UK, 2016).