Leicester: FIFA needs to address atrocities of migrant workers in Qatar

PARIS – It certainly took a while, longer than it should, for the penny to drop at FIFA that deserts get hot in summer. Having belatedly adjusted for that fact, moving the 2022 World Cup to cooler months, FIFA boss Sepp Blatter and the entire sport he oversees must now shift gears and fully focus on the real problem that threatens the tournament in Qatar.

Deaths and the well-documented abuses of migrant laborers in the Gulf emirate’s rush to ready itself for 2022 should be a far more uncomfortable prospect than heat ever was. Having a hand in successfully persuading Qatar to better treat the guest workers it relies upon for muscle would be a victory for the sport. That should be priority No. 1 for those who administer, play and love soccer over the next seven years.

Such lobbying might not work, of course. But soccer must, at least, try harder than it has been to leverage its considerable influence.

There are ingredients in Qatar for a meaningful and enjoyable World Cup. The first tournament in the Middle East, the visitor influx to a region that feels and often is misunderstood, the world communing there in the shared brother/sisterhood of soccer, could help open minds between cultures and peoples.

The shift to November 2022, before players have been exhausted and injured by long seasons, plus pleasant temperatures at that time of year in Doha and the lack of tiring travel between games could be more conducive to energetic, flowing soccer than the Brazil edition.

But the positives won’t resonate as loudly as they could outside of Qatar just so long as its fiercest critics can continue to call it a modern slave state.

Pulling the World Cup out of Qatar isn’t the answer. That, “in the short term … would be a disaster for the migrant workers. They’d be left abandoned. The spotlight would be gone,” said Nicholas McGeehan, a Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch.

And, more to the point, that will never happen. Blatter’s executive committee signing off Thursday on the unprecedented winter time frame for 2022, with a Dec. 18 final, showed how deeply invested FIFA is in its choice of Qatar.

All this to avoid heat. That makes one wonder what mountains soccer might also be able to move with a similarly concerted push in favor of Qatar’s million-plus migrant workers.