From Qatar with Love

Anthony Kila writes about the gains of the recently concluded World Cup football tournament won by Argentina in Qatar

Dear Readers,

Somehow, maybe due to the influence of my Yoruba mother who is a compulsive greeter, I feel it would be blatantly in bad taste for me to start today’s epistle without serving a “compliments of the season to all”, mind you and let us be clear I mean it from the bottom of my heart and to prove how much I mean it we shall come back to those greetings and well wishes very soon.

Today however, the object of our missive is football and where else to take the cue from, if not from the new temple of football, Qatar?

For over two and half decades now, every time I think of football or observe football fans and players a thought comes to my mind: I tend to see football as the most important of the least important things in the world.

Don’t blame or praise me, the thought was planted in my head by legendary Italian coach, Arrigo Sacchi.

More than any other event, the just concluded Qatar 2022 world cup makes the case for anyone who needs to be convinced about the importance of the unimportant event called football that we see in different shades from various parts of the world. It is easy to see how important football is when you think of the amount involved, think of how much players are paid and how much is spent on merchandise and administration of games, we are told the recently concluded Qatar 2022 set back the host country about $300 billions or a lot more, depending on the kind of accounting method you are using.

That is more than any other country has ever spent on hosting the tournament, that is of course an understatement, in realty that is more than the cost of all the 21 world cups from 1930 till before Qatar 2022 combined.

Money aside, the importance of the world cup can also be gauged by the level of participation and passion of pride and prejudice the competition unleashed. So intense was the event that a new term is now available to describe a Post World Cup feeling experienced by fans, it is a sort of anti-climax sensation similar to what people feel when they return to work after a long vacation full or excitement, thrilling moments and happy environments enjoyed by young people during holidays.

The term is “Post World Cup depression”. Yes, football is important and impactful but think about it, nothing would have happened if matches were not played, life would seamlessly continue if the world cup did not hold.

This is all theory though; the World Cup was real and many of us were caught by the frenzy.

On a personal note, I was close to what sport management scholars such as Sascha Schmidt and Benno Torgler described as “disloyal football fans”. I changed my allegiance from team to team up to four times during the competition.

Unlike most of their disloyal fans though, it was not the absence or presence of a star that turned me to an à la carte fan. My change of allegiance was dictated firstly by the absence of Nigeria in the competition and secondly by the annoying tendency of the teams I support to lose.

By the time we, or shall we say they, got to the final, I resorted to rooting for France, yes feel free to laugh as we all know how that ended.

I rooted for France for this following five main reasons: Lyrics of the French National Anthem, Melody of the French National Anthem, Diversity of the French team, Style of the French game and because I don’t like Argentina but they won anyway. C’est la vie…

The victory of Argentina was the last major competitive event that happened in Qatar, the first competitive event was before the first game, it was a victory of policy and management victory by Qatar: National pride provoked a desire to host the world cup and through the committed and visionary leadership of few that deployed their management skills and contacts, Qatar was not only able to win the bid to host the World Cup but they hosted a competition that is arguably the best the world has ever seen.

Fortune helps those who dare, the leaders of Qatar dared for and in the name of their people by putting in place exemplary parks and stadiums, rail networks and hotels, shopping facilities and other exciting tourist attractions, fortune conspired to help them by making sure the tournament was everything analysts, fans and organizers love to see in a World Cup: a thrilling drama of goals, skills, style, twists and tears, no team was a push over.

The world can learn a lot from Qatar about how to spend money and how to make a statement.

We all can learn about leadership and purpose, partnership and vision from Qatari leaders. Argentina goes away with the coveted trophy, the rest of us with memories and dreams, the Qataris now have their world class infrastructure, the name of the country is on the world map and notwithstanding their controversial human rights record that Rotimi Olarewaju, my colleague at CIAPS continue to defend, many will go there for holidays and retreats.

The secret of the success we saw on display in Qatar on and off the pitch of play are not hidden they are essentially about leadership with purpose, planning and partnership.

In Qatar they do not have the kind of popular democracy most of us in the rest of the world have or profess to have, Qataris don’t choose their leaders, the Emir of Qatar does that for them but they have leaders who love their country enough to allow those who can do it make their country look great.

Those of us with the privilege and responsibility of electing public leaders should act with care and wisdom when choosing.

A good place to start from will be for we citizens not to confuse political parties with football teams and not to confuse candidates with football stars.

Join me if you can @anthonykila to continue these conversations.

-Kila is Centre Director at CIAPS Lagos. www.ciaps.org.