Football, the 2022 Qatar World Cup, and Sportswashing: Do Western perspectives recognise the dangers of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism in their approach?

Abstract

Alongside the Summer Olympics, the FIFA Men’s World Cup is one of the two most popular sporting events on the planet. As a truly transnational spectacle, it represents a special opportunity for the host to project an attractive public image around the globe. Qatar has attained exceptional wealth, primarily through gas and oil exports, and has been enacting innovative foreign policies, such as hosting the World Cup in 2022 with the intention of generating an attractive public image of legitimacy, which grants the ‘soft power’ that enables them to transcend their small state constraints. In this commentary, we present our opinion on how before, during, and after the tournament, Western/British media portrayed a narrative that was based on a polarised Western-Middle Eastern cultural conflict that significantly limited Qatar’s ability to transform their hosting of the World Cup into a more positive public image. We frame this by outlining how this approach and these beliefs are essentially driven by Orientalist accusations that position Western ideals as superior to Arabic ones, and we contend, using a Weberian approach, that this was – essentially – an unfair turn of events given the still young (comparable to the West) historical development of Arab states.   &nbsp