How to win the world cup

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How did the 2022 World Cup in Qatar end? Few would have guessed in 2010 that the tiny Gulf state would grace the stage of football’s biggest competition. It seemed an unlikely bidder, and there was not a single suitable stadium. Then there were the temperatures, often hovering around 40 degrees during the summer months: dangerous conditions for playing football tournaments. Fast forward to 2022 and seven new stadiums have been built at huge expense with massive new infrastructure. The opening game is just days away from being played in unusually mild November weather. It’s a story The Guardian’s David Conn has been following from the start. He is the author of The Fall of the House of FIFA and one of the world’s leading investigative journalists on corruption in football. Conn goes back to the beginning: How did it win the bid in the first place? He traces the story from an infamous lunch at the Elysée Palace to the present day, investigating the human rights issues that have arisen over the past dozen years, while also exploring a question that is often curiously unexpected: What does Qatar really want from all this? And what does this tell us about how sport and power work in the modern age? Produced by Ant Adien from Tonic Productions for BBC Radio 4.

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