Criticized Championship

By Hannes Pitkänen & Anton Winnansson

The handball World Championship in Qatar 2015 played between 15^th January and 1^st February has in advance been characterized by rumours and scandals. Slavery and bribes are only a few examples of what has been talked about before the championship.

When Qatar was given the World Championship 2015 in competition with big handball nations such as France and Poland, it immediately started to talk about that it could have been bribes involved. There is no clear evidence that bribes have been made, but there is a certain amount of valid suspicion considering that Qatar used bribes to get the FIFA World Cup 2022.

From the beginning when Qatar was given FIFA World Cup 2022 it was discussed whether bribes were used or not. In June 2014 the Sunday Times got a new document. There appeared amounts of letters and mails sent between FIFA and Qatar, it was then the discussion exploded. In the documents it was revealed that important persons in Qatar paid 30 million Swedish crowns in bribes to get the championship. The former chairman of the Swedish Football Association Lars-Åke Lagrell isn’t surprised. “When there are people that have unlimited financial resources anything can happen” he says to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. FIFA has appointed an investigation to go through everything that happened, to see that bribes weren’t involved. They said that they are open for re-election if it should prove that bribes occurred.

Bought players    

Big players like Valero Rivera, Goran Stojanovic och Danijel Saric are only a few that have been persuaded to change nationality to play for Qatar’s national team. If you look at the team that represent Qatar in the World Championship you notice that nine of 16 players come from another country. The country has with help of their money for four years been able to build a competitive squad for the championship. According to information from the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet the players get 300 000 Swedish crowns per month and 800 000 for every victory. It is huge sums and also one of the many reasons that the championship is so criticized.

They have not only bought players, they have also flown in Spanish fans to support Qatar through the championship. It is a group of 50-60 persons that was offered living, food and trip only to support the home team. It is because the handball culture in Qatar is not big. Therefore it felt necessary to get more fans to create a better ambiance. The fans have brought drums and trumpets expected to create the same ambiance as home in Spain.      

Slavery and criticized arenas

Three big top class  stadiums have been build in preparation for the  World Handball Championship. It is today not clear if these stadiums will be used after the championship. All three stadiums have been very expensive; the biggest one cost 318 million dollars. These arenas have largely been built by slave workers from among other Nepal and India. The workers have been controlled hard by their employers and it has been very poor working conditions. Qatar is ranked of the foundation Walk Free as the fourth worst country in the world when it comes to slavery, much due to the preparations for the World Championship.