The Qatar 2022 World Cup: A beginners guide

With the World Cup less than a week away, the extensive four years teams and fans have been waiting through is finally almost over. So in hopes of helping you not only enjoy but better understand the World Cup, we will go over the basics of what the World Cup is, how it works, and why the 2022 Qatar World Cup has already sparked controversy without even starting.

What is the World Cup?

For those who don’t know, the World Cup is an international soccer tournament that is held every four years. Why every four years, you ask?

Well, first off, it is the biggest sporting event in the world! With three million tickets sold and over one million people TRAVELING TO QATAR to watch this madness unfold. Not to mention that it takes around one month from start to finish. And for those who will be tuning in from home, don’t feel ashamed; as FIFA says, approximately five BILLION people worldwide will be tuning in with you. So yeah, this thing is pretty popular.

Who Competes?

Out of the 209 countries eligible, only 31 can qualify (with the host nation qualifying automatically) through a qualification process that varies per each FIFA continental zone. We want this article to be brief, so if you have questions about this part, Google it!

How does it work?

All right, you know what the world cup is and that it is a big deal. Now, how does it work?
Thankfully it’s pretty straightforward. The 32 teams that qualify are split up at random into eight groups of four in a way that ensures countries from a specific continental region will not all be in the same group.

Each group then plays a round-robin tournament (in other words, each team will go against every other team in their group). From here, only the top two teams from each group can advance to the knockout stage.

A simple scoring system determines the top two teams in each group: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 points for a loss, with goal differential deciding tie-breakers if need be.

The knockout stage begins with the round of 16 and ends with the final. Only one game is played per round to determine who advances, with extra time and or penalty kicks deciding the winner if the teams are tied at the end of the 90-minute regulation. Each team is seeded based on their respective position in their group, which sets the bracket for the round of 16.

Controversy, and a lot of it.

The 2022 Qatar World Cup has created a less than favorable stigma around itself due to the host nation Qatar. This will only be a brief overview of the events that have happened because these are all well documented.

First off is the complete and utter lack of human rights in Qatar. When FIFA first announced Qatar as the host nation for the 2022 World Cup in 2010, questions were raised about the lack of infrastructure and reliance on immigrant workers needed to build the stadiums, hotels, training facilities, etc. Both of those came to be true, and unfortunately, the lack of human and worker rights in Qatar led to around 6,500 immigrant workers DYING in preparation for the World Cup, per the Guardian. For reference, Hurricane Katrina took the lives of 1,833 people.

The other central talking point is that homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, with up to 7 years of imprisonment and conversion therapy being the most common punishments. Qatar has stood its ground on the subject, with the most recent example being a FIFA Qatar World Cup Ambassador describing homosexuality as “damage to the mind” in an interview with German television ZDF on November 8th.

Painfully the list does not end there. Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are heavily limited. Anything that goes against Qatar’s agenda or that criticizes Qatar is illegal and is punishable by up to 5 years of imprisonment and up to a fine of $27,500 USD. Reporters have already been detained and questioned on multiple occasions, the most notable being security in Doha, Qatar’s capital, threatening to smash a Danish reporter’s camera on live Danish television.

All of these and more have put a hard-to-miss stain on the World Cup this year. What makes it even worse is that the World Cup is advertised as a global gathering where everyone unites, accepts each other, and becomes one.

Simply put, as former FIFA president Sebb Blatter said, hosting the World Cup in Qatar was “a mistake.”