Qatar is taking the heat for FIFA corruption

The FIFA World Cup gets underway this week. Normally, the pretournament talk would have focused around which soccer players are set to catch the global imagination and which country’s team will earn the much coveted mantle of world champion.

Not this time. Much of the discussion has centered instead on the host nation, Qatar, and whether it should have been selected for the privilege of putting on the most watched sporting event on earth. Qatar is by far the smallest country ever to host the World Cup — and many critics have denounced the country’s treatment of migrant workers, its attitude to same-sex relationships and what looks like a brazen attempt to launder its image via “the beautiful game.”

Many of those criticisms may be merited, as other articles discuss. But one popular charge — corruption — is more complicated. Whatever Qatar did or did not do to secure the right to host the World Cup, any charges of corruption also implicate FIFA — the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, soccer’s global governing body.