Road to Qatar

A turning point in the history of the stands

The stadium is an ancient invention. Through football, it was reincarnated in the second half of the 19th century in Great Britain, where global stadium trends in the perspective of architecture and design are still determined. During the first hundred years of the existence of football stands, stadia were a rather dangerous place. There was crowd saturation  in the stands, and escape routes were not taken into consideration. In this spatial paradigm, a cultural situation arose, which we can call a phenomenon called heterotopia (Foucault 1967). Heterotopia is a virtual place of social contradictions and transformations that reflect the appearance of an ideal social state -- so, for example, it can be a seemingly egalitarian occupancy of the stands, and at the same time it transforms its norms things that are taboo elsewhere are tolerated in the stands, for example openly racist or xenophobic chants.

A fundamental turning point in the philosophy of stadium and stand design takes the form of a more than one hundred page document called the Taylor Report and dates from 1990. It bears the name of its author Peter Murray Taylor, who was commissioned to investigate the tragedy at Hillsborough Stadium in 1989. Within the stand, 96 people died and the results of the inquiry showed that bad design, poor crowd management and inadequate architecture were to blame.

The Hillsborough incident was not the first time individuals died in UK football stadia. Hillsborough marked the last straw in this phenomeon. After 1990, all stadia in the top English leagues had to be rebuilt to be used exclusively for seating. Since it was widely considered that stadium atmospheres favoured standing over seated crowds, mandatory seating was not received with general enthusiasm, but only with understanding under the weight of sad events. The demands of security have predictably weakened grandstand cultural forms such as cheers and chants that are important to the shared experience of football. In addition, mandatory investments in the reconstruction of old stadia brought about an increase in ticket prices, and with it a change in the demographics of fans and the atmosphere of matches. This occurently quickly and coincidentally at a time when the rapid development of transmission technology was beginning. The imaginary doubling of the meaning of the word football (media football and community football) thus reached a new level in the early 1990s. In 1992, the English Premier League was also established, today the richest league in the world. All in all, an exponentially growing million-dollar industry was created around football, whose main value moved from the stands to the screens.

 

Club football and football of nations

Before discussing the phenomenon of media football within the competition of national teams, the highlight of which is the World Cup, I wish to describe the relationships and the creation of human and financial capital circulating between a football team and its fans, even at the level of club football.

Football clubs in five European countries (England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy) have been able to develop the football media industry to the greatest extent during the last decades and successfully export their product to all continents. In club football, thanks to the media business, the ownership of clubs moves from the local original owners to the hands of international groups and oligarchs often living in another country, or even on another continent. 

In this respect too, England is at the forefront of new trends. In the early years of football, club coffers were filled by membership fees; later on however, ticket sales replaced this role. After the reforms in the 1990s, the running of clubs in the Premier League became so expensive that the old methods could no longer be used for finance. Most clubs therefore moved from models of collective ownership and decision-making into the hands of super-rich individuals.

The loss of local ownership also impacted the names of newly established stadia - for example, Arsenal moved to the newly built Emirates Stadium in 2006, sponsored by the airline of the same name. Manchester City resides at the Etihad Stadium, again sponsored by the airline of the same name, which in 2011 caused the older stadium owned by the city of Manchester to be renamed. Ties with the capital of Arab oil monarchies gradually became a common part of club football in England.

Many British supporters of football refused to identify with these changes, especially its noisy and creative minorities, which exerted protest pressure on club owners (I will mention more about these activities in the chapter Utopia and Practice). The motivations of the representatives of big capital, as well as their ideas about the direction of the media football product, are generally more and more often coming into conflict with the crowds of the stadia. However, the share of local fan communities in strategic decision-making is constantly weakening overall.

 

In the case of national teams, the bond between the team and the fans is not as intimate as with clubs. The decisive difference is the absence of a single home stadium, physical proximity and a strong local identity in relation to the place. The World Cup -- the supreme event of national teams -- is thus in its commercialization, conceived in a form in which the media product dominates the stadium experience, one step further than club competitions, precisely thanks to the smaller physical connection of local fans to international matches. Thus, the interests of capital are more easily asserted in football played at the level of national teams. In the case of Qatar, the dimension of media representation of nations is important not only at the level of its footballers and fans , who are less active than those of clubs, but also at the level of the host country, for which the opportunity to host a world tournament represents a strong, almost state-building tool for creating the national brand and character of its country. At the same time, football in Qatar did not have any tangible background.

 

State-forming transformation

The State of Qatar entered the business of media football already in 2011, when it bought most of the shares of the Parisian club PSG. From a club with higher European standing, it created with the help of investments one of the most watched football brands, with a huge presence in all kinds of media on all continents. In the case of the World Cup, it is an even more complex type of instrumentalization of football events. Directly in Qatar, there is almost no club-based culture, and the country experiences media spectacularity of the highest caliber only for the one-month period of the World Cup. A century and a half of evolving global football culture, based on the mutual dynamics between space and society, did not precede the Qatari championships. In general, the urban space of the country does not stand on any historical plan. Almost everything in the country is new and based on centralized planning, which is also reflected in the form of the newly created stadium infrastructure.

In connection with the absence of the previous football tradition, the role of the stadia, which were created only for the purpose of this tournament, is reformulated for the first time in the context of the championships -- after the end of the representative matches at the tournament, they will be taken over by local clubs in only two cases, but even this will be preceded by the reduction of the stadia by half. However, for a few weeks, Qatar has (with the exception of London) the largest concentration of stadia in the world --⁠ eight, each with more than 40,000 seats, fit into an imaginary circle with a diameter of 25 km. Only one of them is more than five years old, and instead of their history, the tournament guides write about how they will be rebuilt into hotels or dismantled after 2022. The revolutionary nature of these championships therefore lies in the supreme orientation to the export and media sphere of football outside of local importance, the benefits of the championships outside the sports sphere.

The almost month-long event in Qatar also represents the largest media and logistics operation on Earth so far, also with the highest viewership. The Qatari 'engineers' of this event conceived their World Cup as part of a long-term process of economic and social transformation of the oil emirate in the Persian Gulf.

Another unprecedented aspect of the championships is the climatic conditions of the country. Qatar is the first World Cup host country where grass does not grow and football is not part of its cultural history.

Houses, streets and cities in this country, which is roughly the size of Cyprus, grow and take shape both on the basis of the desert climate and on the basis of preferences observed from the West. Skyscrapers, stadia and other facilities for large international cultural and sports events are supposed to create a formally close world for the international residents of the capital city of Doha – the promising world metropolis of the so-called knowledge economy, in which the main raw material is knowledge, sold on the labor market (Zajac–Vanka 2009). Football at the professional level has no tradition here and probably no future. What does this mean for its stands in Qatar? And what will happen to them in the 'post-Qatar' world?

 

Places managed by power

In addition to the subject of architectural study, stadia can also serve as a material historical source to identify the development of various universal values of society such as equality, freedom and democracy. For example, we can say that the rectangle of grass defined by the colour white gradually acquired the symbolic meaning of a place where for 90 minutes we feel the state of an egalitarian, emotionally and affectively connected community.

In these spatial contexts of football, the notions of categorization of urban spaces according to theorist Henri Lefebvre and his publication The Production of Space (1974) are useful. Here Lefebvre introduces the concepts of Intuitus (lived space), Habitus (socially perceived space) and Intellectus (space abstractly created through dominant ideology). This trio of concepts can also be applied to the short history of football stadia. Each of the three concepts can represent specific design, architectural and urban solutions and philosophies of crowd control.

From the point of view of the trichotomy of terms explaining the production of urban space in relation to the stands, the aforementioned Taylor Report represents an event that transformed the space of the stands from a living, spontaneous space (Intuitus) to an abstract and authoritatively managed space (Intellectus).

The word abstract here refers to the application of general schemes, formulas and procedures that come "from above" and do not leave much room for site-specific needs, for spontaneity and unscientific nature, which are characteristics of living space. Among other things, these transformations of the character of the stand area followed the creation of conditions for transmission equipment and journalists - a new essential category of people in the stadium area.

An example of the consequences of this transformation is London - the only place in the world where the concentration of large football stadia is as high as in Qatar on a similarly small area. Although all the stadia in London have been in use for more than a hundred years of completion and are the homes of long-standing clubs, the World Cup could only be hosted here after considerable investment in infrastructure, unlike the Qatar stadia which are veritable film studios.

 

The very first look at Qatar's stadium buildings encourages us to claim that Intellectus is at play here - that is, a space planned and experienced from a position of authority, power and capital. However, the absence of use for local residents suggests that this categorization needs to be expanded to include a kind of virtual space that is formed in the parasocial relationship between the stadia and the global community watching Qatar matches. The formation of this space is made possible precisely by the capacities of technology, while the physical condition for establishing such a state is precisely the equipment of stadia for media work.

We can also perceive the dimension of virtuality in the dimension of a kind of mimesis/imitation of a realistically anchored and historically developed football culture. These buildings do not have a long-term fan and visitor base who aid the turning of architecture into iconic places, but they try to achieve iconicity at least discursively. The final of the tournament will take place at the stadium, bizarrely named Lusail Iconic Stadium. After the championships, this building will be transformed into a non-sports facility, while other stadia will be reduced in capacity and Stadium 974 will be completely dismantled. No iconic architecture is happening.

In addition, among the stadia, suspicious fans from South Asia - of a similar origin to the majority of migrants working in the country - attract the attention of the European media. They enthusiastically encourage European or South American football players. The European public is debating whether they are workers paid to create Potemkin's uncritical euphoria or genuine enthusiasts who have traveled from India to see their television football stars live for the first time.

Qatar's stadia with a very limited lifespan and a fan population giving the impression of extras are thus strangely straddled between physical reality and the space of their own media reproductions. It seems that the usual trichotomy of space production concepts is not enough to name them accurately, and they represent something quite new.

 

The class society of stadia in the conditions of late neoliberalism

From the historical perspective of football and colonialism, it is interesting how paradoxical results and almost "swaping of roles" have arisen in the development of the political institutions of the historically linked territories of Britain and Qatar. The FA Cup, the oldest football competition in the world, has been played in Britain since 1871. For the first few years, it maintained exclusivity for clubs from the upper social classes. However, the popularity of football among the much larger working class created a pressure that resulted in the FA Cup opening up to all a decade later and becoming an important emancipatory platform for the whole society.

Qatar was a British protectorate until 1971. The latest chapter in the history of football, which is being written here, has in common with the first chapters, written in Britain, also the aspect of class inequalities and emancipation efforts.

The championships take place in the context of the enormous wealth of oil and natural gas, which in Qatar is among the largest in the world. The country's oil industry is managed by the state-owned company Qatar Energy, while the semi-constitutional monarchy provides human resources for the growth of its economy through the labor of migrants from African countries and South Asia. The legal framework for this work is called kafala, and it is a system of specific work relationships in which the state ensures a temporary right to stay in the country, granted through so-called sponsors. The sponsor, usually a private employer, obtains the migrant's visa and usually takes the worker's passport upon arrival in the country, thus gaining almost complete control over their fate.

In this way, the legal status of a person and their general condition as a political subject is linked to their occupation. It means that the employer grants a person basic rights, and can limit and take them away at any time. In this model, as cultural critic Charles Mudede writes, society has reached a state of complete neoliberal order, in which "workers are no longer political subjects, and dismissal here is tantamount to deportation." (Mudede 2014) Qatar's football country was also created in these working conditions.

The historical arc through which football reached Qatar has left bitter taste for those contemplating the unjust position of workers who do not have civic status in Qatar. The number of people who died during the construction of the stadia in poor working conditions is currently unknown. Amnesty International, however, talks about the estimate of more than 6500 victims. With a little simplification, we can say that from the point of view of human rights, Qatar today is in about the same condition as Britain was when it started with the first football competition.

The exploitative labor practice that was involved in the creation of the venue for the championships in Qatar brought a massive backlash from the global fan population. With the approaching World Cup in the autumn of 2022, perhaps the largest unorganized campaign in the history of the stands could be observed. Caricaturing and trolling of Qataris were made evident in the form of banners and choreography from dozens of countries, often in a very visually engaging and viral way. It happened during the clubs' league matches, when fans briefly traded the local agenda for a global issue, with Qatar's reputation tarnished by serious suspicions of corruption in winning the bid for the World Cup. What can spontaneous fan protests tell us about the dynamics of the relationship between ordinary football followers and the political power (as well as the power of private money) that increasingly holds the reins of shaping the global character of professional football?

 

Utopia and practice

Fan art is an intangible cultural heritage, linked to many local themes and mythologies. Although stands are a highly visible demonstration platform, they are rarely used for explicit political commentary. And if it happens, then mostly only in a narrow national context. Banners freely expressing protest against the enormous power of financial capital are an indicator of the state of society, which is not fair in the redistribution of resources, but at least allows freedom of speech. However, its democratizing effect is questionable in the conditions of media football, where cameras show the stands only selectively and have the power to simply leave potentially uncomfortable fan expressions out of the camera. Similarly, the years of information flows about slave deaths decreased by the time the crews arrived in Qatar and began to fulfill their duties, defined by monitoring fans and footballers. There is no time to help the suffering, the demand for covering the action on the field is greater and more profitable.

The antithesis of free fan expression is North Korea's stadium choreography, whose state-funded precision shows how fan mentality can be shaped when state power dominates public space.

The fight for control over the visuality of stadium performances and visuals is also ongoing in Qatar. An example is the chaotic and changing statements of the Qatari authorities, which have prohibited players from wearing rainbow armbands. Or is it just the direction of the television broadcasts, which shows only politically neutral fans, while the next day in the newspapers we also find pictures of protest banners in the hands of Iranian women. While until now oligarchs from the autocratic regimes of the Middle East and Russia entered the football business by buying clubs playing matches in stadia in Europe, this time one such country has football stars on its own turf for the first time. The events at the stadia here naturally unfold more according to its habits than it would in Europe.

Remarkable experiments and the search for alternatives are currently included among the protest reactions of fan communities. More specifically, it concerns the establishment of the FC United of Manchester, which was founded by a fraction of the club's fans. It no longer made sense for them to go to the famous Old Trafford stadium after the sale of the club to the American oligarchs Glazers, so this group of individuals founded their own club. What is interesting about its organization is that it is fully managed by members of the club, who also succeeded to finance a new stadium for just over 4,000 people, where they played the ninth highest English league in the 2021/2022 season.

Another area of fan resistance to control is the stands themselves and their rules. As I wrote above, seating stands have become a global standard since the 1990s. However, the desire to stand did not leave people in the stadia, not even in the leading British leagues. After a certain period of time since the Hillsborough tragedy, the topic was made less politically sensitive and, thanks to petitions, it reached the parliament for consideration. First in Scotland and a few years later in England, people could once again stand in selected areas without the threat of fines or expulsion. This compromise, in addition to political will, was also made possible by an innovative design solution, the so-called safe standing. In the stands equipped in this way, people stand leaning on the railings, in which the seats are hidden. They can be folded out in the event that, for example, an international match is being played, where standing would no longer be legal.

Standing in these areas is again related to the alternative practice of the FC United of Manchester, which built its own stadium without much sponsorship. The architecture, design and location of their Broadhurst Stadium resulted from long-term participatory planning and resulted in almost the entire stand area being adapted for standing. This project, based on the cooperation of neighbors and associations, is a materialization of the production of space based on the principle of habitus (perceived space) and shows the possibilities of community resistance against the grip of power in the clubs of big owners. However, it is important to say that this example of a fan alternative stands in the shadow of the deterioration of the position of fans within the original clubs, and is not politically or economically significant on a larger scale.

 

Conclusion: Football after Qatar

In this text, I wanted to point out some features of the Qatar World Cup. I was mainly interested in its stadia and the naturally subversive impulses of their stands. I tried to place these aspects in the context of the development of football as a discipline that reflects the state of our societies and often their worst tendencies in the conditions of late capitalism and -- in the case of Qatar -- also in the dystopia of replacing the civil relationship with the state for the employer-employee relationship.

A country with a similar geographical, climatic and human rights profile -- Saudi Arabia -- is currently trying to host the World Cup in 2030. However, unlike Qatar, it is a large country with a large population and an actual football base. If successful in its bidding for the World Cup, it will mean a return to at least one of the primary functions of the championship, which is the development of infrastructure for the home communities of athletes and supporters. Although it will certainly again be an unnecessarily expensive, opulent, oversized and exploitative infrastructure. In an era of accelerating climate change, this is a deeply troubling modus operandi, perpetuated by autocratic regimes' continued penchant for staging high-profile sporting events.

 

To conclude with  a small anecdote from the Slovak media discourse, which, in my opinion, condenses the atmosphere of helplessness and a spark of hope in the efforts to criticize and oppose Qatar-type media football: In the discussion of the critical article by the sociologist Daniel Gerbery entitled The FIFA Boss Did Not Understand Anything at all, which was published in the middle of the championships on the sme.sk website, the following comment was the first to appear: You are right, Mr. Gerbery, but Portugal 3 Ghana 2 shines directly above your comment.

The comment speaks for itself, but it is not necessarily just bleak and cynical. The hegemonic, unifying, marketing and transcending power of football seems to overcome every critical voice, but perhaps it is this power that will one day help us defeat the many regimes of oppression that try to dominate the game to an absolute extent. Because if football is more than its criticism, it is also more than its oppressive, feudal and dystopian ownership.

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 VEDOMOSTNÁ EKONOMIKA AKO SÚČASŤ RODIACEJ SA POSTKAPITALISTICKEJ SPOLOČNOSTI - Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy - Volume 2, Issue 2 (2009) - CEJSH - Yadda (icm.edu.pl)

Author of the essay and visuals: Samuel Velebný (1990) is a multimedia artist, curator and theorist. He deals with the topic of football in his artistic practice (COLONIAL GOODS exhibition at VUNU Gallery) as well as in his essay writing (Tribune of the People project). Since 2022 he has been a member of the editorial board of FlashArt magazine. In 2022, together with Dominika Moravčíková, he created the dramaturgical plan of the Tabačka Gallery with the title Work-Conflict-Sacred. From 2021, he is a PhD student at the Studio of New Media and Photography of the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice. During his studies and residencies he stayed in Glasgow, Linz, Travnev, Krakow and Athens.

Translation: Deana Kolenčíková

Editors of the publication: Tereza Špinková, Janek Rous