Manchester City victory threatens to strengthen Middle Eastern autocrats
By James M. Dorsey
Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four... more
By James M. Dorsey
Manchester City, by winning the Premier League for the first time in more than four decades, has defied warnings that money cannot buy soccer success and set an example for Middle Eastern and North African autocrats and wealthy businessmen who employ the beautiful game to strengthen unpopular regimes in what an Egyptian democracy activist describes as the new opium of the people.
The Premier League title crowns the investment of an estimated $1.5 billion that the Abu Dhabi United Group headed by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan pumped into the club since it acquired the struggling team in 2008. The investment was used to acquire high profile players, including Argentinian Carlos Tevez, Robinho, Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Touré and Joleon Lescott for a total of approximately $330 million.
Funds were poured into upgrading Manchester City’s facilities: a new office block was built with bars and an entertainment arena for supporters; the Carrington training ground was revamped. The club’s stadium was renamed Etihad Stadium after Abu Dhabi’s premier airline signed a ten-year, $475 million sponsorship agreement with Manchester City.
The Guardian sports writer David Conn notes in a book to be published early next month, ‘Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football And Growing Up,’ that the deprived neighbourhoods surrounding the club ‘s stadium have benefitted little if anything from Sheikh Mansour’s largesse.
Nonetheless, Manchester City fans enthusiastically greeted the Middle East’s first acquisition of a major European club, by wearing Arab headdress and waving British pound notes with the picture of the queen replaced by a Gulf sheikh at the team’s first post-acquisition match. A picture in The Guardian this weekend shows Sheikh Mansour’s portrait featuring on a fake GBP 500 billion note that Manchester City supporters waved at fans of rival club Chelsea.
Fans have at times also been willing to accept cultural changes that have accompanied Arab acquisitions in Europe. FC Malaga’s new owner, law by its new owner, Qatari royal Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani, last year replaced bookmaker William Hill Plc the club’s jersey sponsor because gambling is banned under Islamic. United Nations culture agency UNESCO took the place of the bookmaker.
On the other hand, Real Madrid’s recent decision to remove a Christian cross from its official logo in what it described as the cost of doing business in a globalized world has sparked ire, particularly among anti-Muslim right-wingers. The removal came as Real Madrid embarked on the construction of a $1 billion sport tourist resort in the United Arab Emirates scheduled to open in 2015.
Elsewhere, fans have expressed fears that commercial investment such as new funds that invest in players - Dubai’s United Investment Bank last year launched the Middle East’s first alternative investment soccer fund modelled on similar controversial European funds -- undermines a club’s ability to generate funds of its own and often favours vested interests. Opposition last year by fans of Istanbul’s Besiktas to third party acquisition of three Portuguese players -- Hugo Almeida, Simao Sabrosa and Manuel Fernandez -- was fuelled by unsubstantiated suspicions that the fund involved was a front for club president Yildirim Demiroren, a wealthy businessman who had lent the club just under $100 million.
For Middle Eastern and North African autocrats who have long seen support and control of soccer as a tool to improve their tarnished images, divert attention from widespread grievances and manipulate national emotions the message from Manchester City is that investment in soccer pays political dividends, particularly at a time that the region is wracked by popular unrest. The message is likely to reinforce a tendency to hire and fire managers and coaches depending on how a team performs in its last game rather than in a long-term bid to build a squad’s culture and cohesion. Performance on the pitch is reduced to the prestige of a regime or nation in what to autocratic rulers is a zero sum game.
The message threatens to distort a trend towards professionalization, commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to unlocking economic opportunity in a world where the soccer pitch is often a battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights that was sparked by Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup.
For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals, constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern and North African leaders and soccer officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup for political reasons as well as a sense of pride and realization of what soccer can do for their prestige as well as that of their nations.
Manchester City’s victory threatens to send out the message that money rather than political reform, divorcing soccer from the political control of often unpopular regimes and building a strong, cohesive team over time can do the trick.
Similarly, for European clubs there is risk inherent in dependency on wealthy benefactors and in association with Middle Eastern autocrats.
Michel Platini, the head of Europe’s soccer body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) warned his week in the wake of the Manchester City title win that that clubs dependant on the largesse of wealthy benefactors could face oblivion if they failed to maintain a realistic level of spending.
Mr. Platini defended UEFA’s new Financial Fair Play rules developed in response to an influx of wealthy club owners that require clubs to balance their soccer-related expenditure over a three-year period by telling Fox Soccer America: “We have to protect the clubs, because until they pay Manchester City will be happy but if they (the owners) leave Manchester City what is going to happen with this club?”
Under the new rules, clubs will initially be allowed to make a loss of $60 million over the first three years, falling to $36 million from 2015–16. Mr. Platini reiterated that despite the Manchester City success, money was not a guarantee. Clubs that violate the Financial Fair Play rules could be excluded from European competitions.
The experience of some European clubs illustrates the risk Mr. Platini was highlighting. Emirati Sheikh Sulaiman Al Fahim , barely three months after acquiring Portsmouth FC several years ago, sold the bulk of his stake to Saudi property tycoon Ali Al-Faraj amid reports that his flagship Hydra Village project in Abu Dhabi was floundering. Mr. Al-Faraj too had no intention of staying involved for long. Soon after the takeover, he announced that he was selling the club. But with no buyer on the horizon, Portsmouth FC went into receivership.
Geneva’s Swiss Super League club Servette FC and Austria’s Admira Wacker haven’t fared much better. Servette is on the brink of collapse after Iranian businessman Majid Pishyar who acquired it in 2008, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Mr. Pishyar, who managed the club on a shoe string, tried unsuccessfully to attract government funding by last year appointing Robert Hensler, a former top civil servant for the canton of Geneva, as vice-president. His earlier efforts to salvage Admira, his first European acquisition, failed too. Servette’s problems come on the heels of the bankruptcy in January of Neuchatel’s Super League team Xamax whose Chechen owner was arrested on charges of fraud and financial mismanagement.
Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak in an interview in
Mr. Conn’s book, an excerpt of which was published in The Guardian this weekend, illustrated the benefits as well as the risks of wealthy ownership. Mr. Al Mubarak expressed surprise at the lack of professional administration that Manchester City’s new owners encountered when they took over the club and described how he had introduced a more professional approach. "One of the big surprises was how amateurish it was. I found it shocking in the famous Premier League, to be without such basic
functions" as a personnel department, he said.
Mr. Al Mubarak appointed former Arsenal winger Brian Marwood as head of administration. Mr. Marwood showed Mr. Conn a 30-page, colour-coded analysis produced by Manchester City's new inter-departmental analytic system for a 15-year-old that was being eyed by the club. For major signings, Mr. Marwood said, the dossiers could run up to 50 pages. Before, he said, "it was in people's heads" Now, it is a spreadsheet that. “that detailed, not left to chance," Mr. Marwood said.
Manchester City is unlikely to be able to comply with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules without Sheikh Mansour. The club’s losses for 2010–11, the year before their finances were assessed under the new regulation, were $294 million, the highest ever by an English football club and five times the total the club is allowed in the coming two years.
In Mr. Conn’s book, Mr. Platini’s concern about an evolving unhealthy relationship between money and soccer seemed lost on Mr. Al Mubarak. “Whichever way I asked Al-Mubarak about the instinctive repulsion many people in football have for this kind of "project" – for a rich man to just buy a club, then pour in as much money as it took to buy success – he did not so much defend what they were doing as fail to understand the question,” Mr. Conn wrote.
“If you said football was not supposed to be about which ‘owner’ had the most money, so who could pay the most to players, thereby seducing them to their club, he (Mr. Al Mubarak) wondered aloud how United had won the Premier League so many times, and how anybody could compete with them without money. If you tried to argue that a club should be a club, belonging to the people who support it, that a sporting competition does not seem sporting if it is owned by one rich man spending whatever it takes to stockpile the necessary mercenary talent, you would be describing an abstract idea with which he was unfamiliar, and which did not match reality as it was, and as it was viewed from Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Conn said.
To Sheikh Masour and Mr. Al Mubarak buying a soccer club may be more fun than the oil and gas industry, the mainstay of Abu Dhabi’s economy, but at the bottom line it remains a business. To them clubs are business. "There is an opportunity we have identified and taken hold of. A mid-tier club will move to become a big club because of the financial resources we are able to make available. Because we see value in making that transition. And that is the bottom line," Mr. Conn quoted Mr. Al Mubarak as saying.
Beyond the financial dependency risk, European acquisition targets also run the risk of being associated with regimes potentially capable of using brute force to suppress popular demands for greater freedom. The UAE has nervously reacted to the mass protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa by cracking down on dissent and freedom of expression at home and investing more than $500 million in the creation of a mercenary force headed by former Blackwater security company head Eric Page for the eventuality of an outbreak of protests at home.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.
Estimation of thrust of swimmer's hand using CFD
by Yohei Sato
"Co-authored with Takanori Hino"
"published in Proceedings of 2nd International Symposium on Aqua Bio-Mechanisms, Hawaii, 2003"
"Swimmer A is Ian Thorpe and Swimmer B is Pieter Van den Hoogenband, when Ian made the world record 1'44"05 in 9th FINA World Swimming Championships, 2001, Fukuoka, Japan"
A method to estimate thrust of swimmer’s hand
is established. An unsteady Navier-Stokes solver based on
is established. An unsteady Navier-Stokes solver based on
unstructured grid is employed to calculate a viscous flow
around a swimmer’s hand. Using this flow solver, a simple
unsteady motion and practical crawl strokes are simulated.
Results of the simple unsteady motion show the necessity of
unsteady CFD analysis. In case of crawl strokes,
hydrodynamic forces acting on hands of the worldchampion
swimmers are simulated.
Download (.pdf) 
Unnecessary Roughness: ESPN’s Construction of Hypermasculine Citizenship
by Brian L. Ott
This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of 'Copyright Holder' for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Cultural Studies<=>Critical Methodologies. doi: 10.1177/1532708612446433
This essay undertakes an analysis of ESPN’s coverage of the “Penn State sex abuse scandal” during the first week... more This essay undertakes an analysis of ESPN’s coverage of the “Penn State sex abuse scandal” during the first week following the release of the November 2011 Grand Jury presentment, which indicted former Penn State college football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on 40 counts of criminal sexual abuse. Understanding ESPN’s coverage–its particular framing of this story–is important and instructive, for it reveals how the news media shape public attitudes and opinions, pressure public officials, and model agentive citizenship in response to public traumas. Specifically, it is argued that ESPN’s visual-narrative framing of the scandal perpetuates a hypermasculine (and heteronormative) fantasy of violent vigilante justice that reduces political agency to personal and private acts.
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Conflicting visions of society spark Israeli and Egyptian soccer violence
By James M. Dorsey
Fan violence has sparked match cancellations on both sides of the Arab-Israeli... more
By James M. Dorsey
Fan violence has sparked match cancellations on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.
The stakes for Egyptian and Israeli soccer fans are high – the nature of the society they want to live in and in some cases the very existence of some of their financially troubled clubs – even if the two groups are likely to agree on little more than their passion for the game.
For militant Egyptian soccer fans the battle is about securing the goals of last year’s popular uprising that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ending military rule and saving clubs from financial ruin as a result of initial suspension and ultimate cancellation of Egypt’s top two tournaments. A majority of Egyptian fans, who favor a more pro-Palestinian Egyptian foreign policy, have little empathy for their Israeli counterparts whom they see as thugs, many of whom are racists with their anti-Arab and anti-Muslim chants attitudes.
The Egyptian view is not unfounded even if leaders of the Egyptian ultras – militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened fan groups modeled on similar organizations in Italy and Serbia – are struggling to keep their rank and file whose cry for dignity is often expressed in clashes with security forces under control.
Israeli soccer brawls over the past month ranged from pure hooliganism and violent clashes between players to attacks on Palestinians and more moderate Jews outside the confines of the stadium. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday called for a crackdown on violence on the soccer field, after fighting broke out on Friday between players of Hapoel Ramat Gan and Bnei Lod. "If there's violence, there will not be soccer. We must uproot this violence in order to return to games that spectators can enjoy, myself among them,” Mr. Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting according to The Jerusalem Post.
The incident in Ramat Gan followed thousands of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans rioting on the pitch after their team lost to Maccabi Tel Aviv.
A few days later, two fans of Maccabi Petach Tikvah attempted to attack a referee. In late March a Hapoel Haifa player was hospitalized after being headbutted by a Maccabi Petach Tikvah coach and then kicked in the head by a team associate. The two most onerous incidents involved militant anti-Arab fans of financially troubled Beitar Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu’s notorious club, in which supporters first attacked Palestinian workers and shoppers in a Jerusalem mall and later a Jewish woman who protested against their racist attitude. Police were severely criticized for failing to intervene in the mall attack.
The situation in nationalist Israel and post-Egypt could not be more different the laxity of the Israeli police notwithstanding. Yet, they are similar when it comes to the lack of political will on both sides of the Egyptian-Israeli divide to tackle soccer violence as well as governments’ failure to create an environment in which politically motivated violence is viewed as unacceptable. To be sure, the Israeli Football Association (IFA) has responded firmly to player violence but despite being the only soccer body in the Middle East and North Africa to have launched an anti-racist campaign has been lenient in meting out punishments for politically motivated violence.
The IFA last month significantly reduced Beitar's punishment for soccer violence from three home games out of town and one behind partly closed doors to on the grounds that the measure would not change fan behavior. With the worst disciplinary record in Israel’s Premier League, Beitar has faced since 2005 more than 20 hearings and has received various punishments, including point deductions, fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racism.
Beitar’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African origin, revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians. Supported by Israeli right wing leaders, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities. Beitar is Israel’s only leading club never to have signed an Israeli Palestinian player because of fan pressure despite the fact that Palestinians are among the country’s top players.
By contrast, Egyptian teams already reeling from the cancellation of the Premier League in February following the death of 74 fans in a brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said fear financial disaster as a result of Sunday’s looming annulment of the Egypt Cup. The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) has appealed to the country’s military rulers, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), to step in after a refusal by the interior ministry, which controls the police and the security forces. The refusal was prompted by the security forces’ reluctance to engage with deeply hostile, militant soccer fans because clashes would further damage their already tarnished image as the executioners of the former Mubarak regime and the military.
The military and the police have done little in the 14 months since Mubarak’s departure to polish the image of the security forces by projecting a willingness to reform the police, holding officers accountable for their actions and being seen to investigate the Port Said incident that allows the chips to fall where they fall. The trial against 61, people including fans and nine security officials, accused of responsibility for Port Said was suspended at its opening last week after disruptions by family and friends of the dead.
Police reform is a tough pill to swallow for the Egyptian military. The military “find themselves in a classic Catch-22 situation with regards to police reform. If they listen to the aspirations of the people and fully reform the police, they lose a valuable tool of state control. Should reform take place, where would the buck stop? Real reform in state institutions might later have personal ramifications for SCAF itself, as Egyptians are already calling for civilian control over the military, which may lead to investigations of the military junta down the line. On the other hand, should SCAF choose not to fully reform the police, they risk continued clashes with the people, who no longer fear the police - and consider it one of the last remaining bastions of the old regime,” said Adel Abdel Ghafar, a PhD scholar at the Australian National University and scion of a prominent Egyptian soccer figure, writing on Al Jazeera.com.
Granted, the Israeli police does not have the problems of their Egyptian counterpart. But if the stakes in Egypt are a more transparent, more accountable society, in Israel they are the very democracy that the Jewish state prides itself on, which increasingly is less based on tolerance and respect for diverging opinions and ethnic and religious minorities and ever more so on intolerance and the brutalizing effects of 45 years of occupation of Palestinian lands.
Violence in Israel is not limited to the soccer pitch. A senior Israeli military officer was celebrated by Israel’s right wing after attacking on camera a bicycle protester on the West Bank on camera in the same week as the Ramat Gan incident. Youths on a Tel Aviv beach taunted and abused a mentally disturbed woman inviting her to have sex with them.
The battles in Egypt and Israel are fought on multiple battlefields of which soccer is an important one. That puts the onus not only on governments but also on soccer associations, club management and last but not least world soccer body FIFA, which so far for all practical matters has looked the other way by at best issuing lame protests that Israelis and Egyptians can ignore because there is no price to pay.
With an inept military more concerned about its perks than the country’s future in charge in Egypt and an Israeli government that includes many Beitar Jerusalem supporters, little can be expected beyond at best demands for law enforcement from the highest authority in the country.
That means that the national soccer federations, FIFA and the regional associations, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), more than ever need to step up to the plate.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Soccer meets politics at Doha’s Mohammed Abdul Wahhab Mosque
Qatar’s increasing engagement in European soccer and international sport is just one leg in the small Gulf State’s high-risk attempts to position itself as a global player ‘on the right side of history’. But the accompanying social and political changes also spark local opposition in a conservative culture, James M. Dorsey writes in his second analysis on the Gulf State’s growing influence in international sport.
By James M. Dorsey
20 April 2012
Print version
A multi-domed, sand-coloured,... more
By James M. Dorsey
20 April 2012
Print version
A multi-domed, sand-coloured, architectural marvel, Doha’s newest and biggest mosque, symbolizes both Qatar’s bold storm into the 21st century and the pitfalls that that march entails. It’s not the mosque itself that raises eyebrows but its naming after an 18th century warrior priest, Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Wahhab,
the founder of Islam’s most puritan sect
Ironically, the mosque owes its naming to the debate Qatar’s winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup has sparked. It is a debate that goes to the heart of the energy-rich Gulf state’s identity and the place its ruler, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al
Thani, wants to carve out for his tiny city-state.
The World Cup constitutes a centrepiece of a strategy that seeks to reshape the identity of the world’s only state outside of Saudi Arabia that adheres to Wahhabism, one of Islam’s most austere and restrictive interpretations of Islam; position Qatar as a global player capable of punching above its weight; create opportunities to leverage its enormous wealth in a bid to reduce its reliance on
the export of one commodity; and enhance its security by establishing mutually beneficial relations with friend and foe and ensuring that it is at the cutting edge of history.
The sports leg of Qatar’s broader, high-risk geo-political, conomic and media strategy – involving the creation of a world class airline, Qatar Airways; Al Jazeera as a cutting edge global broadcaster; a far more liberal interpretation of Wahhabism than that of Saudi Arabia and support for many of the popular uprisings
sweeping the Middle East and North Africa – is emerging as a driver of imminent restructuring of the region’s soccer landscape as well as of social change.
To achieve his goal, Emir Hamad has embarked on a buying spree of European soccer assets such as Paris Saint Germain and top league European broadcast rights as well as big ticket sponsorship agreements with the likes of FC Barcelona and the Tour de France, multiple bids for the hosting of international sports tournaments and the construction of world class infrastructure at a cost of tens of billions of dollar.
The strategy, which has exposed Qatar to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny, has already succeeded in putting Qatar with a population of some 1.7 million of which some two thirds are expatriates on the global map. Doha’s massive
international airport is even before its completion an international hub connecting the world’s seven continents. Al Jazeera competes with the BBC as the world’s foremost global broadcaster while Qatari businessmen are beginning to reap benefits in terms of business opportunities from their country’s investment in sports. Doha is a sought after venue for disputing parties such as the United States and the Taliban, bitterly divided
Palestinian factions and warring parties in Sudan, to find a way to bridge their differences.
It is a strategy that envisions cost outstripping material benefit for years to come with some individual components producing tangible results quicker than others. In many ways however, the intangibles – regional and political change, global positioning and the benefits of being on the right side of history – are as if not more important than a bookkeeper’s calculation of outlays and revenues.
Sparking opposition in the emir’s backyard
Yet, it is those intangibles that are sparking opposition in Emir Hamad’s own backyard to the social and economic changes necessary to transform Qatar into a global sports hub and
the political and diplomatic path on which the Gulf state has embarked that is likely to produce a region very different from the one conservative Wahhabis envision. These intangibles challenge a religious and cultural environment that discourages women’s
involvement in sports, often sees Western-style entertainment and fun as irreligious, opposes the kind of political change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa and favours government and society’s uncompromising adherence to Islamic law.
In the latest spat, conservative Qataris, including members of the royal family, quietly backed by Saudi Arabia have challenged the emir’s authority to allow the sale of alcohol and pork to non-Muslims. The conservative opposition has already prompted the ban of alcohol on a man-made island largely frequented by expatriates, a decision to make Arabic rather than English the language of instruction in education and a boycott of Qatar Airways. So far both sides have scored points. Sports has been exempted from the imposition of Arabic as the language of instruction while the naming of the mosque after Sheikh Mohammed throws a bone to the conservatives albeit one that is unlikely to satisfy them.
Beyond forging a national identity, sports serves also as an effort to pre-empt the kind of youth-led rebellion that has been rocking much of the region for the past 16 months. “Our goal is to create a dialogue that resonates with and talks to the youth. This is an opportunity to inspire and engage young people…. Sports are at
the heart of Qatar’s development… Sports like education and arts are part of our national identity,” Noora Al Mannai, CEO of Qatar’s bid to win the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games, told a recent brainstorm in Qatar designed to define the role
of government, NGOs and business in sports. She described “empowering young people” as one reason for the bid alongside Qatar’s efforts to mediate conflicts and reduce regional obesity and diabetes levels.
Sport as a trigger for social change
Nonetheless, sports are likely to spark a social revolution of sorts as long as the emir is able to keep the conservatives in check. For one, it is forcing Qatar to become the first wealthy Gulf state dependent on expatriate labour to significantly improve
working conditions and the legal environment of expatriate workers in line with international standards. It is however not clear yet whether that will also mean legalizing the existence of trade unions.
With international trade unions threatening a global campaign under the slogan 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights,' Qatar has further vowed to ensure that contractors involved in preparations for the 2022 World Cup will adhere to international labour laws.
Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi conceded early this year that "major sporting events shed a spotlight on conditions in countries. There are labour issues here in the country, but Qatar is committed to reform. We will require that contractors impose a clause to ensure that
international labour standards are met. Sport and football in particular, is a very powerful force. Certainly we can use it for the benefit of the region."
Qatar and other oil-rich Gulf states have long been targeted by labour organizations for their treatment of particularly unskilled and low-skilled workers. Qatar like the UAE and others in the Gulf operates a sponsorship program under which all foreign
workers have to have a local sponsor who can make seeking alternative employment or another sponsor difficult and who often retains the worker’s passport on employment. Trade unionists argue that the lack of a minimum wage further enhances exploitation of labour.
The issue of workers’ rights touches a raw nerve in countries like Qatar and the UAE where the local population constitutes a minority. Gulf states are concerned that improving labour conditions would not only have economic consequences but also
give foreigners a greater stake in a society which ensures they are forced to leave the country once their contract has ended.
Qatar’s employment of sports to project itself internationally coupled with pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has also prompted Qatar to field women’s athletes for the first time in its history at this year’s London Olympics. Qatar
alongside Saudi Arabia, which is still struggling with how to respond to the IOC, and Brunei, is the only country never to have been represented by women at an international tournament. To be fair, women in Qatar, in contrast to their sisters in Saudi Arabia, are by and large subject to far less restrictions.
Increasing professionalization and commercialization in the region
Finally, in a part of the world where sports and particularly soccer are often a battlefield for political, ethnic, religious and gender rights, Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup has sparked a growing push towards professionalization,
commercialization and the creation of a proper football industry as a key to unlocking economic opportunity.
For many in the region, last year’s Asia Cup final in Doha, in which half of the competing teams hailed from the Middle East with not one reaching the semi-finals, constituted a wake-up call. It is an experience, Middle Eastern leaders and soccer
officials do not want repeated at the Qatar World Cup.
"Something is moving," says Santino Saguto, an Italian soccer management consultant based in Dubai. "Qatar 2022 has prompted the region to discuss ways to create value. The leagues, the football associations and the media are starting to buy into the concept. That's how it started in Europe."
The UAE took a first step a few years ago when for the first time it marketed the rights to broadcast its league matches – a key step in generating revenue and creating value. The UAE example is reportedly being discussed by Saudi Arabia, the region's most
important league beyond Egypt.
That is not to say that the UAE's blazing of the trail is not without its birth pangs. Commercial broadcasters charge that state-owned networks distort competition by paying exorbitant amounts for the exclusive right to broadcast major football events.
They point to Al Jazeera's clinching of the right to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cups for an undisclosed amount believed to be in excess of US$3 billion. Abu Dhabi Media Company, owned by the royal family, was moreover awarded the
exclusive rights to air the English Premier League in the UAE.
________________________________________
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog,
The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Sports reporting and gender: Women journalists who broke the locker room barrier
by Journal of Research on Women and Gender
Tracy Everbach and Laura Matysiak, University of North Texas
This qualitative study examined female sportswriters‟ influences on sports journalism. Interviews with 12 women who... more This qualitative study examined female sportswriters‟ influences on sports journalism. Interviews with 12 women who broke the locker room barrier in the 1970s and 1980s showed that the journalists fought hard to gain access to athletes‟ inner sanctum. Once they gained access, they endured harassment and embarrassment, but ultimately landed compelling stories from their subjects. The women broke many barriers for women sportswriters today. However, with a shrinking journalism industry and continuing discrimination, their efforts are unlikely to produce job equity in the near future for women journalists or for media coverage of women‟s sports.
Spain’s economic crisis creates opportunity for Al Jazeera
By James M. Dorsey
A refusal by Spanish commercial television stations to bid at current rates for rights... more
By James M. Dorsey
A refusal by Spanish commercial television stations to bid at current rates for rights to broadcast next season’s top league Spanish soccer matches creates an opportunity for the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera network to advance its push into Europe and to become the world’s premier global broadcaster.
A bid for Spanish rights would reaffirm Al Jazeera’s strategy of moving in behind other Qatar government institutions as they conclude sponsorship agreements and acquisitions such as the winning of the hosting the 2022 World Cup and in France. It would also fit with the broadcaster’s move into markets such as Egypt in anticipation that they will generate revenue at a later stage rather than immediately and Qatar’s strategy of employing sports and media to leverage its global influence.
More than anything else, Al Jazeera and the 2022 World Cup have put Qatar, a tiny city state, on the world map. With Al Jazeera, Qatar rewrote the Middle East and North Africa’s media landscape, which until then was dominated by heavily censored state-owned broadcasters. Qatar’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, ignored with few exceptions the protests of Al Jazeera’s often freewheeling journalism by various Arab leaders as well as initial US government portrayals of Al Jazeera as an Al Qaeda mouthpiece.
Al Jazeera has spent an estimated $400 million in the last year for broadcast rights to France's soccer league, the Champions League and Europa League, as well as some top German and Italian matches. It also concluded a $225 million sponsorship deal with FC Barcelona and a member of the royal family has bought FC Malaga.
Al Jazeera’s opportunity in Spain emerged after the country’s major commercial television stations, Antena 3 de Television SA (A3TV) and Mediaset Espana Comunicacion SA (TL5), said that they would only bid in June for the soccer league broadcast rights if rates were dropped by half. Reduced rates however could put the financial future of the Spanish league in jeopardy with players worried that clubs may not be able to honour their contracts.
The Spanish League generates annual television revenues of approximately $600 million. Business Week quoted Antena 3 as saying that Rival La Sexta, with which it is merging, paid $78 million for last season’s rights or just under $2 million for each of the 38 matches.
Antena 3’s net income fell 14 percent last year while Mediaset SpA (MS), the parent company of Mediaset Espana, cut its dividend in March after profit dropped more than estimated on lower advertisement sales, Business Week said.
“The problem with sports events is that it’s good for ratings but it’s a financial disaster,” Antena 3 Chief Executive Officer Silvio Gonzalez told the magazine.
Al Jazeera’s opportunity is bolstered by the fact that the economics of Spanish league broadcast rights are complicated by Spain’s economic crisis, which has seen media revenues decline and unemployment rise, as well as the fact that Spanish law requires one match a week to be aired on a free-to-air rather than a pay tv channel. Complicating a possible Al Jazeera push into the Spain is the fact that each Spanish club sells its own rights which strengthens the negotiating position teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.
The potential crisis in Spanish soccer has fuelled calls for the dropping of the legal requirement of a free-to-air game amid a flurry of Spanish and British media reports about players getting ready to transfer abroad after this season ends.
Britain’s The Sun reported that Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City might offer $67 million for Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, who scored more than 25 goals for Spain’s Atletico Madrid this season. Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain could also well try to exploit Spain’s dilemma.
Al Jazeera has not commented on whether it is considering bidding for next season’s Spanish league rights. A bid would however be in line with the Gulf state’s global soccer and media ambitions as well as Sheikh Hamad’s proven willingness to enable Al Jazeera to suffer multi-year losses as it builds its business.
The broadcaster, the most popular sports network in the Middle East and Africa with two free and 15 pay channels, has acquired the rights in 23 countries to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups as well as to the troubled premier league in Egypt, where the pay TV market is still underdeveloped.
Al Jazeera is expected to launch a new French channel in early June in time for the European soccer championships after acquiring French rights in the wake of Qatar’s acquisition of Paris Saint-Germain.
Al Jazeera, which shares the rights with free-to-air channels TF1 and M6, who as part of their package will broadcast those French matches which have to be shown on free TV under French law, sees France as its test case for establishing itself as a pay-TV broadcaster in Europe.
The broadcaster is also looking at challenging this spring Rupert Murdoch’s BskyB for British rights to the English Premier League, at approximately $3 billion the world’s most expensive soccer league broadcast rights, and could also bid for German Bundesliga rights.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Spain’s economic crisis creates opportunity for Al Jazeera
By James M. Dorsey
A refusal by Spanish commercial television stations to bid at current rates for rights... more
By James M. Dorsey
A refusal by Spanish commercial television stations to bid at current rates for rights to broadcast next season’s top league Spanish soccer matches creates an opportunity for the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera network to advance its push into Europe and to become the world’s premier global broadcaster.
A bid for Spanish rights would reaffirm Al Jazeera’s strategy of moving in behind other Qatar government institutions as they conclude sponsorship agreements and acquisitions such as the winning of the hosting the 2022 World Cup and in France. It would also fit with the broadcaster’s move into markets such as Egypt in anticipation that they will generate revenue at a later stage rather than immediately and Qatar’s strategy of employing sports and media to leverage its global influence.
More than anything else, Al Jazeera and the 2022 World Cup have put Qatar, a tiny city state, on the world map. With Al Jazeera, Qatar rewrote the Middle East and North Africa’s media landscape, which until then was dominated by heavily censored state-owned broadcasters. Qatar’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, ignored with few exceptions the protests of Al Jazeera’s often freewheeling journalism by various Arab leaders as well as initial US government portrayals of Al Jazeera as an Al Qaeda mouthpiece.
Al Jazeera has spent an estimated $400 million in the last year for broadcast rights to France's soccer league, the Champions League and Europa League, as well as some top German and Italian matches. It also concluded a $225 million sponsorship deal with FC Barcelona and a member of the royal family has bought FC Malaga.
Al Jazeera’s opportunity in Spain emerged after the country’s major commercial television stations, Antena 3 de Television SA (A3TV) and Mediaset Espana Comunicacion SA (TL5), said that they would only bid in June for the soccer league broadcast rights if rates were dropped by half. Reduced rates however could put the financial future of the Spanish league in jeopardy with players worried that clubs may not be able to honour their contracts.
The Spanish League generates annual television revenues of approximately $600 million. Business Week quoted Antena 3 as saying that Rival La Sexta, with which it is merging, paid $78 million for last season’s rights or just under $2 million for each of the 38 matches.
Antena 3’s net income fell 14 percent last year while Mediaset SpA (MS), the parent company of Mediaset Espana, cut its dividend in March after profit dropped more than estimated on lower advertisement sales, Business Week said.
“The problem with sports events is that it’s good for ratings but it’s a financial disaster,” Antena 3 Chief Executive Officer Silvio Gonzalez told the magazine.
Al Jazeera’s opportunity is bolstered by the fact that the economics of Spanish league broadcast rights are complicated by Spain’s economic crisis, which has seen media revenues decline and unemployment rise, as well as the fact that Spanish law requires one match a week to be aired on a free-to-air rather than a pay tv channel. Complicating a possible Al Jazeera push into the Spain is the fact that each Spanish club sells its own rights which strengthens the negotiating position teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.
The potential crisis in Spanish soccer has fuelled calls for the dropping of the legal requirement of a free-to-air game amid a flurry of Spanish and British media reports about players getting ready to transfer abroad after this season ends.
Britain’s The Sun reported that Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City might offer $67 million for Colombian striker Radamel Falcao, who scored more than 25 goals for Spain’s Atletico Madrid this season. Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain could also well try to exploit Spain’s dilemma.
Al Jazeera has not commented on whether it is considering bidding for next season’s Spanish league rights. A bid would however be in line with the Gulf state’s global soccer and media ambitions as well as Sheikh Hamad’s proven willingness to enable Al Jazeera to suffer multi-year losses as it builds its business.
The broadcaster, the most popular sports network in the Middle East and Africa with two free and 15 pay channels, has acquired the rights in 23 countries to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups as well as to the troubled premier league in Egypt, where the pay TV market is still underdeveloped.
Al Jazeera is expected to launch a new French channel in early June in time for the European soccer championships after acquiring French rights in the wake of Qatar’s acquisition of Paris Saint-Germain.
Al Jazeera, which shares the rights with free-to-air channels TF1 and M6, who as part of their package will broadcast those French matches which have to be shown on free TV under French law, sees France as its test case for establishing itself as a pay-TV broadcaster in Europe.
The broadcaster is also looking at challenging this spring Rupert Murdoch’s BskyB for British rights to the English Premier League, at approximately $3 billion the world’s most expensive soccer league broadcast rights, and could also bid for German Bundesliga rights.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
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Conservative Saudi crown prince endorses female participation in Olympics
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has approved plans for the... more
By James M. Dorsey
Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has approved plans for the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom to send female athletes to the Olympics for the first time at the London Games in a move that counters fears that he would be a less progressive ruler than ailing King Abdullah, according to Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper.
In doing so, Prince Nayef, the kingdom’s long-serving interior minister who is widely viewed as a conservative even by Saudi standards and is closer than the king to the country’s powerful, austere Wahhabi clergy, is bowing to pressure from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that threatened to bar Saudi Arabia from the London games if it failed to field female athletes.
The decision is likely to be welcomed by liberal Saudis who worry that once he succeeds King Abdullah he will prove to be more susceptible to demands of the clergy who adhere to the teachings of the 18th century puritan warrior-priester, Mohammed Abdul Wahhab to reverse the process of gradual political, economic and social reforms initiated by King Abdullah. In an illustration’s of the clergy’s conservatism, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz bin Abdullah recently called for the destruction of all churches in the Arabian Peninsula.
The decision by Prince Nayef is likely part of a concerted government effort to fend off a possible popular uprising in the kingdom similar to those sweeping large parts of the Middle East and North Africa by catering to youth sentiments and growing female demand for sporting opportunities.
Prince Nayef earned a reputation as a hardliner most recently for his crackdown on Al Qaeda militants in the kingdom. By the same token, he oversaw a largely successful rehabilitation program that guided the return to society of former Al Qaeda operatives.
Al Hayat said that Prince Nayef’s approval was conditioned on women competing in sports that "meet the standards of women's decency and don't contradict Islamic laws." It was not immediately clear which sports the crown prince had in mind.
Al Hayat reported Prince Nayef’s decision a day after the IOC reported that progress had been made in negotiations with Saudi Olympic officials on sending female athletes and officials to the games.
Saudi Arabia alongside Qatar and Brunei has never included women in its Olympic teams. IOC officials believe that Qatar and Brunei will also be fielding women athletes in London for the first time.
“The IOC is confident that Saudi Arabia is working to include women athletes and officials at the Olympic Games in London in accordance with the international federations' rules," the IOC said.
Earlier, IOC President Jacques Rogge said in an interview with The Associated Press that he was "optimistic" that Saudi Arabia would send women to London. "It depends on the possibilities of qualifications, standards of different athletes. We're still discussing the various options," Mr. Rogge said.
He said a decision would be finalized within a month to six weeks, but "we are optimistic that this is going to happen."
The apparent IOC success in nudging Saudi Arabia into complying with the committee’s charter contrasts starkly with world soccer body FIFA’s failure to hold the kingdom to its obligation. Saudi Arabia fields a men’s soccer team but restricts if not bans women’s soccer.
FIFA’s failure to pressure Saudi Arabia also contrasts with its recent effort to ensure that observant Muslim women can play professional soccer by lifting its ban on women wearing the hijab in favour of a headdress that fulfils the cultural needs of Muslim players and meets safety and security standards.
International human rights group Human Rights Watch last month accused Saudi Arabia of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.
The Human Rights Watch charges contained in a report entitled “’Steps of the Devil’ came on the heels of the kingdom backtracking on a plan to build its first stadium especially designed to allow women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation to watch games. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014.
The report urged the International Olympic Committee to require Saudi Arabia to legalize women's sports as a condition for its participation in Olympic games.
Saudi women despite official discouragement have in recent years increasingly been pushing the envelope at times with the support of more liberal members of the ruling Al Saud family. The kingdom's toothless Shura or Advisory Council has issued regulations for women's sports clubs, but conservative religious forces often have the final say in whether they are implemented or not.
In a sign that efforts to allow and encourage women's sports are at best haphazard and supported only by more liberal elements in the government, the kingdom last year hired a consultant to develop its first national sports plan - for men only. There is no legal ban in on women’s sports in Saudi Arabia where the barriers for women are rooted in tradition and the kingdom’s puritan interpretation of Islamic law.
The pushing of the envelope comes as women are increasingly challenging other aspects of the kingdom's gender apartheid against the backdrop of simmering discontent in Saudi society over a host of issues.
Manal al-Sharif was detained in May of last year for nine days after she videotaped herself flouting the ban on women driving by getting behind a steering wheel and driving. She was released only after signing a statement promising that she would stop agitating for women's rights.
A group of women launched earlier this year a legal challenge to the ban asserting that it had no base in Islamic law.
Opposition to women's sports is reinforced by the fact that physical education classes are banned in state-run Saudi girl’s schools. Public sports facilities are exclusively for men and sports associations offer competitions and support for athletes in international competitions only to men.
The issue of women's sport has at time sparked sharp debate with conservative clerics condemning it as corrupting and satanic and charging that it spreads decadence. Conservative clerics have warned that running and jumping can damage a woman's hymen and ruin her chances of getting married.
One group of religious scholars argued that swimming, soccer and basketball were too likely to reveal “private parts,” which includes large areas of the body. Another religious scholar said it could lead to “mingling with men.”
To be fair, less conservative clerics have come out in favour of women's sports as well as less restrictions on women. In addition, the newly appointed head of the kingdom's religious vigilantes is reported to favour relaxation of the ban on the mixing of the sexes.
In defiance of the obstacles to their right to engage in sports, women have in recent years quietly been establishing soccer and other sports teams using extensions of hospitals and health clubs as their base.
Prince Nayef’s decision has revived hope that 18-year old equestrienne Dalma Rushdi Malhas who won a bronze medal in the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics in which she participated at her own accord would be among the first Saudi women athletes to compete at an Olympic games. Expectations that she would be competing in London were dashed recently when the Saudis qualified an all-men team qualified for London’s jumping competition.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Syrian TV accuses FC Barcelona of aiding anti-government rebels
By James M. Dorsey
State-run Syrian Al Dunya television, in one of its more bizarre parroting of... more
By James M. Dorsey
State-run Syrian Al Dunya television, in one of its more bizarre parroting of allegations of foreign intervention by embattled President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has accused crowned traditionally left-wing leaning Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona of employing its tactical formations to deliver coded messages to armed Syrian rebels.
The television broadcast the allegation as fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army retreated from the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor following a fierce two day Syrian military assault in what activists said was an effort to spare residents further bloodshed.
The retreat followed earlier rebel withdrawals from Homs and Idlib.
The withdrawals appear to signal a shift in rebel tactics from trying to hold on to territory in favour of a campaign of bombings and assassinations, particularly in the sensitive Syrian capital of Damascus.
Al Dunya charged that Barcelona’s tactical formations represented a map of routes from Lebanon to Syria used to smuggle weapons to the Syrian rebels. It said projecting the map on a Barcelona Copa del Rey quarter final match against Real Madrid that players in the club’s formation on the soccer pitch were the equivalent of smugglers while the ball represented weapons as they were moved along the smuggling route.
Al Dunya asserted that midfielder Andres Iniesta operated at the beginning of a smuggling route while a late game pass by player of the year Lionel Messi constituted the successful handover of an arms shipment in Deir al-Zor at the end of the route. In Al Dunya’s apparently doctored version of the match a mysterious, unidentified player appears as Messi passes the ball. The shadowy player somehow ends up in the Real Madrid goal. Midfielder Sergio Busquets Burgos was also part of Barcelona’s international intrigue, Al Dunya said.
The report serves as further evidence of the callousness of the Assad regime and the degree to which Mr. Assad and his immediate family and aides appear to be cut off from reality – a portrait that also emerges from Assad family emails disclosed earlier this month by The Guardian which detail the president’s purchases on ITunes and his wife’s acquisition of luxury goods at the same time that his forces push on with their brutal year-old crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Al Dunya’s assertions are likely to be an attempt at scoring public relations points against Qatar, the Arab nation that together with Saudi Arabia has taken the lead in denouncing the Assad regime, seeking to isolate it in the Middle East as well as internationally and calling for support for the country’s armed resistance. Barcelona signed its first ever commercial shirt sponsorship agreement worth $200 million in December 2010 with the Qatar Foundation, a state-owned charity.
The Al Dunya report was posted on YouTube and has been viewed by almost half a million people.
Al Dunya charged that the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television network was repeatedly broadcasting clips from the Barcelona match in a bid to weaken the Assad regime. Al Dunya earlier this month charged that Al Jazeera sports newscaster had incited listeners against the Assad regime during his coverage of a match between Syria and Bahrain in London.
Syria has repeatedly over the past year accused Al Jazeera and other foreign media from being in bed with anti-government forces. Syria has barred all foreign media from reporting from the country and has tightly controlled the movements of the few journalists granted entry.
Syria’s invocation of soccer as part of the international conspiracy it alleges that it is battling underscores the important role of soccer in Middle Eastern and North African politics.
Syria’s national soccer teams flagrantly set rules aside in recent months in their line-ups to ensure success on the pitch in a bid to demonstrate that Mr. Assad’s regime is in control and can perform despite the violence and turmoil and the hope that success on the soccer pitch would rub off on the regime.
World soccer body FIFA last September barred Syria from competing for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil after the country’s national team fielded an ineligible player in in a qualifying match against Tajikistan. Lebanon has accused Syria in November of fielding six players in an Under-19 Asian Football Championship qualifier whose ages had been falsified to qualify them for the team.
By the same token, Syria refused to send athletes to last November’s Arab Games because it feared embarrassment if some of its sportsmen defected.
That fear may not have been unfounded. Abdelbasset Saroot, who was targeted by pro-Assad forces and is believed to be in hiding since the Syrian military recently entered the rebel stronghold of Homs, symbolizes the regime’s problems with its youth soccer team.
A 20-year old goalkeeper for Syria's national Under-23 team, Mr. Saroot is a leader of the revolt in Homs. “They are really targeting me. They really want to get me. They want to kill me. But God is giving me life. The more death and destruction we face, the higher our optimism and spirit. We are not sad that our martyrs are dead but we miss them as revolutionaries” Mr. Saroot says in an Al Jazeera documentary.
The documentary pictures Mr. Saroot standing on a podium leading protesters with a chant:
“My homeland is Syria
Those who want to challenge this revolution are not up to the task
We want to hang Bashar and crush this tyranny,” he sings.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Alcohol debate shines light on divisions in Qatari society
By James M. Dorsey
Delegates to a high-powered international sports security conference had a glimpse this... more
By James M. Dorsey
Delegates to a high-powered international sports security conference had a glimpse this week of Qatar's internal debate about how far the Gulf state should go in meeting Western and world soccer body FIFA demands that offend conservative segments of Qatari society and the royal family.
With the debate focused on the availability of alcohol during the 2022 World Cup, the first ever to be hosted in the Middle East, delegates watched Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee general secretary Hassan al Thawadi walk a tightrope in a bid to appease all parties.
Mr. Al Thawadi set off alarm bells in his official address to the 2nd International Sport Security Conference when he questioned the need for the serving of alcohol in stadiums. Mr. Al Thawadi’s remarks were perhaps mistakenly seen as backtracking on an earlier pledge that alcohol would be relatively freely available during the World Cup.
"I don't see the reason for it being in the stadium. I'm looking at it in terms of England and looking at in terms of everybody else. That is something we are discussing with FIFA ... Let's discuss this with relevant stakeholders and come up with a plan that welcomes everyone,” Mr. Al Thawadi said.
Speaking to journalists later, Mr. Al Thawadi insisted that alcohol would be available during the World Cup. "All I can say is alcohol will be available – maybe not as freely available as some other countries but it will be available. We plans and as we go along more clarity will be provided to people," he said.
Qatar never promised publicly to allow alcohol in stadium but has insisted since winning the right to host the World Cup in December 2010 that it would allow consumption of alcohol in specially designated fan zones.
Mr. Al Thawadi believes that he stands on strong grounds that the alcohol issue is a safety and a security issue rather than a cultural or religious one. FIFA, defending the commercial rights of its sponsors, including Budweiser beer brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, has locked horns with the non-Muslim hosts of the next two World Cup, Brazil and Russia. Both countries have outlawed the sale of alcohol at sporting events in a bid to control crowds and pre-empt violence.
Qatar’s reluctance to allow alcohol in stadiums is however being increasingly compromised by Brazil and Russia caving into Western and FIFA demands. A Brazilian congressional commission caved in earlier this month and approved a World Cup bill earlier this month that would allow the sale of alcohol in stadiums. The bill still has to be endorsed by the Brazilian parliament’s lower house and senate and then by President Dilma Rousseff.
Russia too appears about to give in. Russian soccer federation president Sergey Fursenko recently called for the reinstitution of beer advertisements in Russian stadiums. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a soccer fan that “when the decision was made about stadiums, it came from the best of intentions. OK, we’ll return to it again and think about it.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Al Thawadi was hedging his bets because the alcohol issue takes on particular significance in Qatar, the only Muslim state besides Saudi Arabia that adheres to the puritan concepts of Mohammed Abdel Wahhab. An 18th century warrior preacher, Mr. Abdul Wahhab's teachings are among Islam's most conservative. By and large Qatar has nonetheless developed a far more liberal approach than is practiced in Saudi Arabia.
Increasingly, however, conservative Qataris and some members of the royal family are signalling their dissatisfaction with the course Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani supported by his wife, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, is steering. Some of that criticism is believed to be tribally motivated because Sheikha Mozah hails from a tribe that traditionally opposed the Al Thanis.
As a result, the debate about allowing alcohol amounts to far more than a discussion about what concessions Qatar should make to Western soccer executives and FIFA. It is a debate about the future course of the country, the powers of its ruler and its national identity.
The outcome of the debate will not only determine the future of Qatar’s effort to become a global sports hub – a key pillar of the national identity Emir Hamad is seeking to shape – but also its positioning as a forward-looking sponsor of change in a region stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf that is wracked by anti-government protests and convoluted transitions to more open societies.
Mr. Al-Wahhab’s puritanism constitutes the cradle of Salafism – an Islamic trend that propagates a return to the way of life at the time of Islam’s first 7th century caliphs and has emerged as a power political force in post-revolt Egypt and elsewhere in the region. Saudi Arabia recently officially embraced Salafism as a key element in its soft power strategy aimed at countering Iran’s perceived revolutionary Islamic appeal as well as the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
The embrace also constitutes a response to Qatar’s idiosyncratic foreign and domestic policies, including its support for the Muslim Brotherhood that is widely distrusted by Saudi Arabia.
The latest debate was sparked when a group of rowdy Australians and New Zealanders left a bar on Pearl Qatar Island, home to an estimated 41,000 residents many of whom are expatriates, alcohol bottles in hand and continued drinking in a public space.
Qatar allows drinking only in hotel bars rather than in public spaces. The December incident prompted a ban on drinking in Pearl Island restaurants that have since seen their revenues drop dramatically.
The Pearl Island incident has emboldened Qatari critics of alcohol to argue that the emir’s tolerance violates the country’s constitutions and laws which do not grant him the prerogative to allow its sale or consumption. In doing so, the critics are implicitly sparking a rare debate about the powers of the ruler.
Hassan Al Sayed, a professor of constitutional law and former dean of the College of Law at Qatar University, charged that there is no Qatari law that allows for the sale of alcohol and that in fact several laws, including the constitution, criminalize it. Even “if there is any decision coming for example from the Emir or any department here (legalizing alcohol)… no in fact, this is not okay and this is against the law,” Mr. Al Sayed said.
He said that for Qatar to legally allow the sale and consumption of alcohol it must change its constitution, which in article 1 stipulates that “Islam is the State’s religion and the Islamic Sharia is the main source of its legislations.” Mr. Al Sayed argues that the legal ban applies also to free zones the government said it would create for fans attending the 2022 World Cup.
A majority of Qataris is likely to oppose constitutional reform out of fear that the country would lose its Islamic identity, a key element in the national identity it is trying to shape.
If sports are for Qatar’s leaders a key tool in forging national identity and projecting Qatar internationally, banning alcohol is its equivalent for more conservative and nationalist forces in the Gulf state.
"I don't see a reason to have alcohol. It impacts very negatively on locals. Locals are not happy with it," The Wall Street Journal quoted Qatari writer Abdul Aziz Al Mahmoud as saying.
Conservative Qataris worry that an increasing number of their compatriots, often dressed in full-length robes, the Gulf's national dress, drink publicly in hotels and bars. "It is a taboo in Qatar to see somebody wearing the national dress and drinking," said Hassan Al Ibrahim, a Qatari commentator, according to the Journal.
Conservative fears in a nation where locals account for at best one third of the population were further inflamed when the Qatar Distribution Company, a Qatar Airways owned-retail shop, introduced pork alongside the alcohol it was already selling to expatriates. The introduction was one spark of an online call to boycott the airline. It followed a similar protest in recent months decrying telecommunications services.
"I never thought the day would come that I have to ask the waiter in a restaurant in Qatar what kind of meat is in their burgers," said a Qatari on Twitter.
"Ppl don't get it. Its not about the pork—its about us feeling more & more like a minority—in our own country,” tweeted another Qatari.
The sense of being a minority in one’s own country prompted the Supreme Education Council to recently order all educational institutions to impose Arab as the language of teaching within nine months.
The order came after Qatari crown prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani attended a graduation ceremony last fall and noted that the majority of graduates were not Qataris but foreigners. "Where are the Qataris7 Sheikh Tamim asked.
Academics attribute the lack of male Qatari students to the fact that local head hunters hunt Qataris in high school offering them salaries that are the equivalent to what they would earn once they complete a university study. “There is no need for them to study,” a foreign professor said.
Sheikh Tamim is widely viewed as sympathetic to the conservative element of Qatari society. Hotels in Qatar that he owns are among those that do not serve alcohol.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Re-Placing Sport Migrants: Moving beyond the Institutional Structures Informing International Sport Migration
International Review for the Sociology of Sport (forthcoming) available on journal website in on-line first publications.
Interest in international sport migration has been burgeoning recently. This article considers the dominant... more Interest in international sport migration has been burgeoning recently. This article considers the dominant theoretical models used to explore these movements and suggests that it is time to rethink some of our theoretical presumptions. Recent permutations of this theoretical model, shifting from globalization to network theoretical models, make this reconsideration of migration-related theories necessary. Drawing on the groundbreaking work done in the 1990s and on Rafaelle Poli’s rapidly expanding body of work, it becomes apparent that a more flexible, open-ended theoretical model is necessary. This article reviews these theoretical models before making a suggestion of how international sport migration might be better framed for understanding how migration is structured and experienced in multiple locations around the world. Considering that migrants are bodies moving through space, it seems crucial to return migrants to space-based models of movement thereby advocating a theoretical model that takes into account the complexly dynamic relationships between migrants, institutions, and places.
Iranian interference in soccer federation election puts FIFA on the spot
By James M. Dorsey
An effort by the Iranian government to force the resignation of recently re-elected... more
By James M. Dorsey
An effort by the Iranian government to force the resignation of recently re-elected Iranian Football Federation (IFF) president Ali Kafashian constitutes the second time in as many months that a Middle Eastern government defies world soccer body FIFA’s ban on political interference in the beautiful game.
It also spotlights FIFA’s systematic failure to impose governance on its members in the Middle East and North Africa, a part of the world where soccer has over the years become a political battlefield. As a result, governments openly flaunt FIFA’s authority.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a soccer fan who micro manages affairs of the Iranian federation in a failed bid to bolster his popularity, is using the judiciary in a blatant effort to nullify Mr. Kafashian’s re-election.
In a law suit, the attorney general asserted that Mr. Kafashian’s re-election is illegal because he is banned from holding public office as a retired public employee. The attorney general has further threatened to prosecute members of the IFF executive committee who voted in favour of Mr. Kafashian.
The state-owned Fars news agency reported that iran’s recently created sports ministry is pressuring Mr. Kafashian to resign so that it can get a government approved candidate elected.
In a separate report, Fars highlighted the importance of sports to the government in a report about support by prominent sportsmen including former national soccer team players Alireza Mansourian and Hassan Roshan, Teheran’s Esteghlal FC soccer academy chairman Faramarz Khodnegah and national body building federation deputy head Seyed Hassan Afzali for a global march to Jerusalem to demand an end to Israeli occupation.
Ironically, Mr. Kafashian’s retirement was not a legal issue when he was first elected four years ago with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s backing. Nor did FIFA complain about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political meddling to secure Mr. Kafashian’s 2008 election two years after it had briefly suspended Iran for interference in IFF polling.
Mr. Ahmadinejad turned this year on Mr. Kafashian because the IFF president had failed to ensure that soccer would boost the Iranian leader’s tarnished image. On the contrary, Iranian soccer has gone from bad to worse under Mr. Kafashian’s leadership.
Mr. Kafashian defeat of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s manipulation in early March came in the same week that the Iranian president’s conservative opponents triumphed in parliamentary elections. The legal proceedings highlight the importance Mr. Ahmadinejad attributes to control of the soccer federation, particularly against the backdrop of his parliamentary setback. Mr. Ahmadinejad became this week the first Iranian president since the Islamic revolution 33 years ago to be forced to justify his performance to parliament.
A diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Tehran leaked by Wikileaks asserts that Mr. Amadinejad’s interest in soccer as a political tool has had limited success. The cable reported that he pressured the IFF to lift its 2008 suspension of star Ali Karimi so that he could play in 2010 World Cup qualifiers, engineered the 2009 firing of Ali Daei as coach, and ensured that Mr Daei’s successor Mohamed Mayeli-Kohan lasted all of two weeks in the job so that his preferred candidate could be appointed.
Mr. Ahmedinejad has justified his interference telling Iranian journalists that “unfortunately, this sport has been afflicted with some very bad issues. I must intervene personally to push aside these destructive issues.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s blatant meddling in this month’s IFF election constitutes the second time in as many months that a Middle Eastern government openly flaunts FIFA rules to benefit politically from the beautiful game. It highlights FIFA’s increasing lack of credibility in the region.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter last month unsuccessfully demanded that the board of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA), appointees of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, be reinstated after it was summarily dismissed by the government in the wake of the death of 74 militant soccer fans in the Suez Canal town of Port Said in the worst sporting violence in Egyptian history.
The government ignored Mr. Blatter’s demand and outmanoeuvred the FIFA president by ensuing that the board after its official dismissal announced its resignation without acknowledging that it was at the behest of the government.
Mr. Blatter’s failed effort put the world soccer body at odds with Egyptian fans and clubs who had been campaigning for the last year for the resignation of the EFA board. It also contrasted starkly with FIFA’s failure for years to protest against the Mubarak regime’s political interference.
FIFA has been similarly lax in imposing adherence to FIFA criteria in the Egyptian premier league, a majority of whose members would be disqualified if the soccer body’s rules were applied. The same is true for the top Iranian league.
The comparison between Egypt and Iran doesn’t stop there nor does the risk of FIFA finding itself on the wrong side of history.
One reason Mr. Ahamdinejad turned against Mr. Kafashian is the fact that the soccer pitch on Mr. Kafashian’s watch has repeatedly in Tehran and Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, turned into a venue for protest against the Iranian president’s government. The soccer pitch was an important incubator of the revolt that toppled Mr. Mubarak.
The IFF president is also the fall guy for the failure of successive national coaches to deliver performance even though Mr. Ahmadinejad took a direct interest in their appointment. The coaches failed to take Iran to World Cup finals or triumph in Asian Cups, dashing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hopes that the national team’s resulting prestige would rub off on him. Iran still stands a chance for qualifying for the 2014 Brazil World Cup.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
A bloodsucking focus of sports
Muela-Meza, Zapopan Martín. "A Bloodsucking Focus of Sports" The Graduate Quill. Buffalo, NY: SUNY at Buffalo, Graduate Student Association, MDRF, April 2001. First Prize Winner in the Mark Diamond Research Fund Essay Competition
A BLOODSUCKING FOCUS OF SPORTS
By: Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza
Student of the Master of Library and... more
A BLOODSUCKING FOCUS OF SPORTS
By: Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza
Student of the Master of Library and Information Science Program
Department of Library and Information Science, School of Information Studies
(now Library and Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education)
State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY-Buffalo, University at Buffalo)
Buffalo, New York, USA
March 28, 2001
Email: zmmuela@acsu.buffalo.edu
zapopanmuela@gmail.com
http://web.archive.org/web/20020817064235/http://www.sis.buffalo.edu/faculty/sullivan/495-500/Fall-01/Muela/PersonalSiteProject/resume02.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20020618222056/http://www.sis.buffalo.edu/faculty/sullivan/495-500/Fall-01/Muela/PersonalSiteProject/curriculumvitae.htm
https://sites.google.com/site/zapopanmuela/
Reference:
This paper was originally published at the Graduate Quill publication of the Graduate Student Association at the State University of New York at Buffalo where I won the first prize on the sports category on April 2001, see evidence of the record at http://web.archive.org
Muela-Meza, Zapopan Martín. "A Bloodsucking Focus of Sports" The Graduate Quill. Buffalo, NY: SUNY at Buffalo, Graduate Student Association, MDRF, April 2001. First Prize Winner in the Mark Diamond Research Fund Essay Competition. [See Full Text Article]
http://web.archive.org/web/20020613174353/http://wings.buffalo.edu/gsa/prize_winners.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20020613174353/http://wings.buffalo.edu/gsa/prize_winners.html
Abstract
Sports since their origins in ancient times have inflicted damage to people or animals participants in such and such game in one way or the other. These are some of the most sanguinary examples: The killing of slaves by sport ordered by the ancient Roman emperors at the Roman Colliseum, just to amuse poor working classes; Mexican-Spaniard “charreria” as of charros wearing big sombreros and harming cattle and eventually butchering on site by suffering or afterwards by sport (e.g. US rodeo); Bullfighting, butchery of bulls by sport; capitalist-bourgeois class corporations selling alcohol and other licit drugs during all sorts of massive competitions, by sport, and making millions of dollars in ever crescendo corrupted sportive activities. All of these might then be considered as the bloodiest, negative, bloodsucking side of sports; which is seldom researched in the literature.
Keywords: sports; negative social aspects of sports; anti-ethics in sports; charreria; rodeo; killing of ancient gladiators in Rome Colliseum; bullfighting; capitalist-bourgeois class corporations selling alcohol and drugs by sports.