The Daily - How This World Cup Changed Soccer

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

For weeks, much of the globe has been riveted by the highs and lows of the World Cup in Qatar. On Sunday, the soccer tournament culminated in a win for Argentina and its star, Lionel Messi, against France.Here’s how the thrill of the game eclipsed the tournament’s tainted beginnings, and what that might reveal about the future.Guest: Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: After a tournament shadowed by controversy, Qatar had the turn in the global spotlight it sought.This World Cup has blurred the line between the artificial and the authentic, but the people, as usual, defined the tournament.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. For the past few weeks, the world has been riveted by the drama of soccer's biggest tournament being played in Qatar, the World Cup. On Sunday, it culminated in a breathtaking win for Argentina and its star player, Lionel Messi. Today, I talk to my colleague Rory Smith about how the tournament's tainted beginnings were eclipsed by the thrill of the games, and why this World Cup may be an unsettling sign of things to come in professional soccer. unsettling sign of things to come in professional soccer. It's Monday, December 19th. Rory?

Hey, Sabrina. How are you doing? Hi, I'm good. I'm good. What's going on around you? I hear a lot of sounds. Yeah, so I'm sitting outside the Lusail Iconic Stadium, the venue of the World Cup final. I'm surrounded by a little battalion of kind of glazed-eyed policemen who are, I suspect, at the end of their shift, and they're kind of going through what they've seen over the course of the evening.

There's an endless parade of journalists coming out of the stadium, milling around, all with an equally glazed expression. And there's just the kind of detritus of the global media. There is the last few kind of... Hey, detritus. What are you calling detritus? I include myself in that. There are little groups of people who've worked in hospitality coming out, staff at the stadium leaving. You know, the game finished a couple of hours ago, but it's a big place and

there's a lot to do after games. So these are kind of the final few people starting to make their way home after the World Cup final. You know, I was trying to prepare for this episode, Rory, and I kept hearing in the next room my husband, who was watching the game, shouting for joy. He was just really, you know, making a lot of noise. And at some point I just gave up on preparing for the episode because I thought I have to go in and watch the rest of the game. So it was really unbelievable, this game. Yeah, you couldn't help but be swept away by it. Yeah, you couldn't help but be swept away by it.

Defending World Cup champs, France, led by Kylian Mbappe, squaring off against Lionel Messi's Argentina. You have this kind of extraordinary story unfurling of Lionel Messi. Messi scores! Everything seems to be smooth sailing. Here it comes, Di Maria! But World Cups in general are never smooth sailings. So France come back and in two minutes everything falls apart. Then you have the tension of the last few minutes of the game as France try and find a winning goal. The French have been down and out and they have risen back. Argentina are on the brink of a sort of national scarring really,

something that would haunt them for years. They make it to extra time. Let's go Martina and save Messi! Clear the line, did it cross the line? Did it cross the line? Yes it did! Messi scores what everybody assumes is the winning goal, what he assumes is the winning goal, what he assumes is the winning goal, what the fans in the stands assume is the winning goal.

Then the French go and score again, so you have penalties. And then a penalty shootout is the most exquisite sort of torture anyone has ever come up with in sport, I think. So painful. He said, I dare you to go there, and Mbappe says, I will. Rolls it in. You know there are going to be one or two or three extremely unfortunate villains through no real fault of their own.

Saved! And he missed! And then this curiosity of World Cups, you know, that soccer isn't scripted, and that's its glory, like all sports. Gonzalo Montiel can win the World Cup for Argentina with this kick. So a guy called Gonzalo Montiel, who's a relatively unheralded, but obviously quite successful right back, steps up to take the kick that echoes through history.

Yes! right back, steps up to take the kick that echoes through history. He scores. Just three all after two hours, Argentina beat France in a penalty shootout. The Argentine end melts into delirium and jubilation and this sort of sea of humanity. Argentina, you can cry. You can cry tears of joy for Lionel Messi. Messi collapses to his knees and Argentina, for the third time, for the first time in 36 years,

are champions of the world. A moment that cements his legacy as the greatest of all time. And Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player who's ever lived, has the one trophy that had always alluded him. Were you, like, in one word,

what were you feeling? I don't think I'm allowed to say that word on the daily. I think that would be very offensive to all concerned. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. I was totally swept up in the Messi story because he's the player of my lifetime. And I feel genuinely privileged

to have seen him play in the flesh. And I felt he deserved it. So yeah, I was impartial because I'm a reporter, but this felt like the right ending. So Rory, when the World Cup first started, we had our colleague Tarek Panja on the show. And we left the conversation with Tarek asking the question, what would the world remember about this World Cup?

Like, would we remember the migrants who died to build the stadiums and build the infrastructure to hold it? And, you know, now I think we can pretty confidently say that most people will remember this World Cup for the win of Argentina, of Messi, and not really, you know, the abuses leading up to it. Yeah, you have this dual narrative, don't you, of Messi's incredible journey at the age of 35 to the trophy that he's wanted for his entire career that seemed to have eluded him in addition to the most remarkable final of all time. And to be honest, it seemed unlikely at the start of the tournament that that would be how this whole thing ended because those first couple of weeks, as you probably remember,

were dominated by what I'm sure the Qataris would refer to as teething problems. We had the issue over whether beer could be sold in stadiums. There were fans who were turned away from games because they were wearing T-shirts or hats or whatever it might be with rainbows on them and that was seen as trying to promote lgbt rights we had the contra-tomp over whether certain european teams would be allowed to wear an armband and it seemed as though fifa and qatar were really determined to stamp their authority on the tournament, to make it the World Cup as they wanted it to be without any of these pesky questions over equality and human rights.

But in doing so, it felt a lot like they were drawing more attention to those issues. And really, what got them out of that mess that they themselves had kind of made was the sport. That once the World cup gets underway the eyes of the soccer community in particular are drawn to the games themselves so early on in the tournament here at lusail in fact you had one of the biggest shocks in world cup history when saudi arabia beat argentina which was you know looking back now it seems remarkable. And at the time was jaw-dropping. That result kind of set the tone for the first 10 days, certainly, of the tournament, when it was followed by Japan beating Germany in this remarkable five-minute turnaround,

and then doing exactly the same thing against Spain. It just felt like the rules were all upside down, like gravity had ceased to apply to like all of these teams. Yeah. And after a while, we started to see that the ultimate example of this in Morocco. Nobody had really seen Morocco as a contender in this World Cup. Zakaria Abkulaou! Moroccan mayhem! And then the turning point was they beat Belgium. A win or even a tie against Canada on Thursday and Morocco moves on.

If Morocco beat Canada, they would win the group. Morocco not only advances, Kobe they win the group. Morocco duly did that. And that tees up what looks like a slightly unfortunate last 16 game with Spain. One of the big names in European soccer, one of the pre-tournament favourites, a team full of established stars. Spain cannot score!

a team full of established stars. But Morocco, through a mix of intensity and grit and refusal to lose and no shortage of talent, held the Spanish to a draw, took them to penalties and beat them. Incredible, incredible. Which suddenly takes Morocco into the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Part of it is confidence, right? You beat some of those opponents, your confidence continues to build.

Listen, I don't rule them out in a quarterfinal match against Portugal. And at that stage, they run into Portugal. And this is it for Morocco. The Moroccan dream is very much alive. And at that stage, they run into Portugal. And again, the Moroccans beat them. And in that moment, Morocco, this unheralded team, become the first African side ever to make the World Cup semifinals. That's powerful enough. But what gives it a real resonance is that Morocco aren't just an African team. They're a North African team. They identify largely as Arab. You had Tunisians supporting Morocco. You

had Egyptians supporting Morocco. You had Egyptians supporting Morocco. The Lebanese supported Morocco. There were celebrations in Amman and Cairo and Tunis and Riyadh for Morocco's success. And given that this is the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East, to be held in a Muslim-majority nation, to be held in an Arabian country, that gave Morocco's story a tremendous power. This is the first time, and I am so happy that we live this moment now in Qatar, and what I can say, it's unbelievable to me, to be honest. Morocco became this real symbol, right? This force for unity for Arab countries and African

countries, even if ultimately they didn't end up making it to the final. Well, it's interesting. It feels slightly intangible and a bit ethereal. They were representing, and they felt like they were representing, Africa and the Arab world, and they were doing it in an Arab country at the first Arab World Cup. So going back to our question about Qatar, I mean, this is kind of an interesting moment, right? Like, they're the first Arab country to host, and here you have this kind of Cinderella story about an Arab team. It sounds like this is exactly what Qatar would have wanted. Yes and no.

I think it was definitely welcomed by the Qataris as a people that there was an Arab team doing so well. the Qataris as a people that there was an Arab team doing so well. But there comes a point where people are watching the soccer and the story that people were watching was Morocco. And it felt a little bit at times like the first Arab World Cup was becoming less about Qatar and more about Morocco. Right. On the one hand, of course, these underdog narratives are what Qatar wanted because the spotlight has shifted away from, you know, the stain of the migrant deaths. But on the other hand, it's Morocco and Messi who got the spotlight, not Qatar. Right. I mean, who really cares at the end of the day who hosted the World Cup after you watched this final? No one. Right. Yeah. And for most people, obviously, the World Cup is a TV spectacle. It doesn't really matter where it is. But both for Qatar and for the sport itself,

the things that have captivated the viewing public are really only one aspect of the World Cup. There's a lot more at stake here than just which storylines are unfurling on the pitch. We'll be right back. So I should warn you that, and this happens a lot in Qatar, there's just some fireworks going off. There's kind of the most amazing New Year's display of fireworks you've ever seen just in the sky over there for reasons no one's really clear about.

Fireworks because you're halfway done with our episode. It might be that, yeah. Well, I think they probably saved the best of them until we finished. Okay. So Rory, if most of the world moves on and forgets about Qatar, what's in it for them at the end of all of this? Like, why do it in the first place? There were several different strands of logic behind it, I think. Part of that is domestic. You know, we've seen in Doha and in Lusail, which are separate cities, not just whole neighborhoods spring out from the ground,

but an entire place. Lusail did not exist 10 years ago. And kind of away to my left now, I can see these four soaring towers, which will be the home of the country's sovereign wealth fund and Qatar National Bank. They're surrounded by apartment blocks that are currently empty but which are meant to attract 250 000 people and there's a argentinian man shouting so the face of qatar has changed drastically in the last 10 years because of the huge construction project that hosting the world cup entailed but it's also changed qatari society a little bit i think I spoke to someone early on in the tournament who said that the reason people think Doha is boring is because there isn't that much to do in Doha, or there didn't used to be that much to do in Doha. Whereas now in Masherab, which is the kind of downtown district that has

been revamped and refurbished for this tournament. There are hipster coffee bars, there are trendy barbers, you know, there's all the accoutrements of those premium developments that you see in London and New York and everywhere else. And are people using them, Murray? Well, yeah. And obviously, for the most part during the tournament, it's been visitors. It's been the people who've come from all over the world, and particularly from the Middle East and North Africa, who've been using those coffee bars, those restaurants. But it's been the people who've come from all over the world and particularly from the Middle East and North Africa who've been using those coffee bars, those restaurants. But it's been Qataris too.

That's been really noticeable. And obviously, we can't say this with any certainty now, but you do wonder whether that will be something of a shift for Qataris. If they have places to go to, if you want to go into a San Francisco-style coffee bar in Doha, now you can. And having that option may well make Doha a more vibrant, more lively city. So there may well be some sort of longstanding impact of the World Cup on the way that Qataris live their lives. Interesting. And what about outside Qatar? Like, that's domestic.

What about the world? Well, that, I think, is the central purpose of why the World Cup has been here. And that's probably why the impact on the soccer view in public will be relatively low down Qatar's list of priorities. Qatar's a very rich place in a very dangerous neighborhood. You've got Saudi Arabia on one side, Iran on the other, and this tiny country that has the world's third largest proven reserves of natural gas sitting in the middle. Qatar kind of needed to announce itself to the world it needed to become the sort of place that people think about that people consider as an established global player and from qatar's point of view this tournament has been an enormous success there's been the kind of obvious stuff whereby you've seen this

parade of global leaders both both political and in the corporate world, come through Qatar, you know, not just for meetings, but just to see and be seen. We had Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State. We've had Jared Kushner, who I think has now been twice. He was in a corporate box for the final with Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and Tesla. Wow. And we had Emmanuel Macron, the French president. And we've also seen a succession of politicians from nearby. So Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia,

was at the opening ceremony, sitting very close to the Emir of Qatar, which just a couple of years ago, when Saudi was leading a blockade of Qatar, would have seemed completely unthinkable. We've had the president of turkey attend games they've been representatives from the jordanian royal family it has felt at times a little bit like a kind of davos in the desert but this is a place where people come to to display their power and to meet with other powerful people and i think qatar has reveled in playing that role and that i think has accentuated one of the main benefits of hosting the world cup

which is the sense that and it feels intangible and a little bit woolly but it's the sense that qatar is now a place that people have heard of so if you're if you're in a boardroom if you're a corporate leader if you're trying to do business with Qatar, there's no reason to be not skeptical or suspicious of it, but to find it too foreign or too distant. Like it's Qatar, it hosted the World Cup. We know those guys. And I think that has an incredible value to Qatar as it seeks to establish itself as a diplomatic player, as a political player, as a place to do business. It's not quite as foreign as it seeks to establish itself as a diplomatic player, as a political player, as a place to do business. It's not quite as foreign as it once was. Right, right. So in other words, even if, you know, the average soccer fan might not have Qatar at top of mind, moving forward,

global leaders and kind of movers and shakers and CEOs have a new appreciation for the country. Like, you know, if ever there was a stamp of global approval, this was it. Yeah, having the World Cup says you belong. I think even if the soccer view in public retains some muscle memory of this World Cup being controversial or this World Cup coming at a cost or this World Cup being in some way problematic, that cost is massively offset from a Qatari point of view by the benefit of the luster and the glamour and the acceptance that having the World Cup bestows. Right. But of course, Qatar and Qatari officials aren't the only ones with tons of money and reputation riding on this, right? There's also FIFA, the sport's global governing body. So how are they feeling about all of this?

Oh, FIFA have had an absolutely great time. FIFA could not be happier in any way. They have made, they said on Friday, $7.5 billion over the course of the four-year cycle between the last World Cup and this one. That includes a billion dollars in excess profits. So FIFA, yeah, this has gone okay for FIFA. But almost as important as that is the kind of fabric of the tournament. A few years ago, Jerome Valker, who was a bigwig in FIFA, who was later disgraced, made an off-the-cuff comment saying that too much democracy can be a problem for FIFA. Because what FIFA likes to do with the World Cup is arrive in a country,

kind of claim territory, set its own rules, plaster everything in its own insignia and its own sponsors, and turn that place into FIFA land, where everything kind of looks the same, and you know exactly where you are because everything is FIFA. FIFA land as in like Disneyland? Like what's FIFA land, where everything kind of looks the same. And you know exactly where you are, because everything is FIFA. FIFA land is in like, like Disneyland? Like what's FIFA land? FIFA land is kind of a cross between a theme park and a weird simulacrum of reality. Like the reality you've been living in for the past month. Yeah, kind of. And this is the thing that FIFA have been able to do here more than anywhere else. Obviously, the last World Cup was in Russia, which was also an authoritarian state, but it was also held in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, where ordinary people are trying to go about

their business, even as this mega event is unfolding in front of them. And that's complicated, because those people want to get to work. They want want to get to school they've got things to do they don't necessarily need to give their city over to hordes of traveling soccer fans whereas in Doha that hasn't been a problem the schools have been shut in Doha for six weeks most offices have closed for the duration of the tournament this has been for FIFA essentially a blank canvas huge stretches of Doha have been built for the tournament Lusail This has been for FIFA essentially a blank canvas. Huge stretches of Doha have been built for the tournament. Lusail itself has been built in its entirety for the tournament. There's no objection. There's no limit to what they can do. Money has been no object. And so what we have had is effectively the purest form of FIFA land.

And what does that FIFA land look like for you? I mean, you've been living in it for the past month. There's a lot of fences everywhere because you're not allowed to walk in certain directions at certain times. There's lots of vaguely vapid slogans like now is all and together that are meant, I think, to inspire you. But it feels just a little bit 1984. There's music everywhere. There is no point at which it's quiet or still or restful it is just a constant barrage of sound and light and stimulation and that seems to be what what fifa have designed and what fifa have wanted that they they have been able to paint this city, this country, with their own brush. They've turned it into their ultimate vision of what the World Cup should look like,

which is not necessarily Qatari or even Arabian, really. It's international. It's disembodied. A lot of the music is Western. Most of the music is Western, or at least Western-inflected. A lot of the adverts are for Western brands. All of the adverts, even for Qatari or Arabian brands, feature Western celebrities and particularly footballers. It's kind of everywhere and nowhere all at once. In a way, it's like this World Cup was proof of concept for FIFA, right? That they could partner with a place like Qatar and it would be fine. In fact, it would actually be better. You know, you don't have to worry about

all of that kind of pesky democracy stuff that slows things down. Without a shadow of a doubt, we're now in a situation where this is the first World Cup in the Arab world in a Muslim-majority country. And the the first that's taken 92 years it may only be eight years before we're back the 2030 competition is the world cup centenary and there's always been a sense among soccer's power brokers and particularly i think amongst fans that by right that tournament should be held in south america and particularly in argentina and uruguay uruguay was the venue for the first world cup in 1930 and the final that year was between Uruguay. Uruguay was the venue for the first World Cup in 1930 and the final that year was between Uruguay and Argentina. But I think at this stage, the

favourite probably has to be Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince, has been a visible presence at the World Cup this year. He has a relationship with Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president. And Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in sports in recent years. It's not just the purchase of a Premier League team, Newcastle United, but also the Live Golf Tour, the Breakaway Golf Tour, and Formula One. Saudi Arabia has seen what sport can do for a country and a regime that's faced international criticism not only over the ongoing war in Yemen, but over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. This is part of Saudi's playbook. And Saudi not only has the money, of course, to stage a spectacular tournament, but it also offers FIFA that chance to build a FIFA land. It would be a blank slate. It would

be another set of new stadiums. It would be a city turned over to FIFA's whims and desires. And I think what we've seen from this tournament is that FIFA knows exactly how it wants the World Cup to look and it's likely to want to take it to a place that allows it to do that again with the added benefit that Qatar and FIFA have as you say ridden the storm of the migrant worker deaths of the treatment of migrant workers and of the issues around equality and particularly gay rights. FIFA may well feel that seal has been broken and that there is now no reason not to take the tournament to Saudi Arabia. It works for them. There are questions for the rest of us. It puts a lot of soccer fans in a difficult position. It forces soccer itself really to confront issues

over how important it feels itself to be, what cost is worth having a World Cup. I don't think there's any reason to believe that FIFA from now on will spend any time at all thinking about those questions. Right. So to the question of what we're willing to accept, you know, we started this World Cup with stories of Qatar's rocky path, and we're ending it on this image of Messi's triumphant win and a proven blueprint, really, in a lot of ways for FIFA. So I guess, Rory, at the end of this tournament, what are we left with? That's a great question. I'm sitting in front of this enormous kind of golden bowl of Lusail Stadium, and it's really hard not to look at it and think that the

whole idea was for the glamour of the occasion, for the spectacle that FIFA and Qatar have put on, to dazzle everybody and make us all forget the cost of being here, the way we got here. A little to my right there used to be a wall that was composed of thousands of photos of the migrant workers who'd worked on building this stadium and it was one of those things that Qatar had done that seemed to acknowledge the human cost of this tournament and then we got here for the first or second game and it had been painted over with FIFA branding and that felt like a fairly obvious metaphor for the tournament,

that ultimately the World Cup begins, the biggest show on earth, and everything else is forgotten. And that is a really uncomfortable truth to confront. I think it's really hard to leave Qatar without that sensation that the controversies that we thought we'd face throughout this tournament ultimately were silenced by the sport.

And that is the power of sport. It's why Qatar wanted to host the World Cup. It's why it was prepared to risk all of the reputational damage of the last 12 years because it knew it would arrive eventually at this moment where it would get its shot of Lionel Messi lifting the World Cup and it would have the world agog at what it had just seen. That's why all of this has happened. And it's hard to avoid thinking that really ultimately at the end

it kind of worked out for Qatar and for FIFA. Rory, thank you. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Monday, the trial of five members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group involved in the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, is set to begin, with jury selection happening in Washington, D.C.

The five defendants face charges of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors intend to argue that, in inciting the crowd to violence, the defendants aimed to stop the lawful transfer of power and ensure that President Donald Trump remained in office. The case comes less than a month after Stuart Rhodes, the leader of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers, was convicted on similar charges. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Asa Chaturvedi, with help from Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Mark George, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano,

and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.