In January 2009, the process of submitting bids to host the FIFA World Cups in 2018 and 2022 began. There were 11 initial bids for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, but Mexico withdrew from the process.[45][46] Indonesia’s bid was rejected by FIFA in February 2010 after the Indonesian Football Association failed to submit a letter of Indonesian government guarantee to support the bid.[47] Members of UEFA were no longer in contention to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.[48] There were five remaining bids for the 2022 FIFA World Cup: Qatar, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and the United States The decision to host the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which was graded as having “high operational risk,”[51] generated criticism from media commentators.[52] It has been criticised by many as being part of the FIFA corruption scandals.[53] There have been allegations of bribery and corruption in the selection process involving FIFA’s executive committee members.[55] These allegations are being investigated by FIFA (see Bidding corruption allegations, 2014, below).[49] Two FIFA executive committee members were suspended The legitimacy of Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup was questioned in May 2011 due to allegations of corruption against senior FIFA officials. The manner in which Qatar obtained the right to host the event has been the subject of accusations of corruption. A FIFA inward examination and report got Qatar free from any infringement, yet boss examiner Michael J. Garcia has since portrayed FIFA’s report on his enquiry as containing “various really inadequate and incorrect portrayals. “[56]

In May 2015, Swiss government examiners opened an examination concerning defilement and tax evasion connected with the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.[57][58] In August 2018, previous FIFA president Sepp Blatter guaranteed that Qatar had utilized “dark operations”, recommending that the bid board had cheated to win the facilitating rights.[59] A few examinations found that Qatar looked for an edge in getting facilitating by recruiting a previous CIA official turned private worker for hire, Kevin Chalker, to keep an eye on rival bid groups and key football authorities who picked the champ in 2010.[60]

In September 2018, a designation from al-Ghufran clan stopped a grumbling to FIFA’s leader to dismiss the foundation of the World Cup in Qatar except if its administration reestablished the Qatari ethnicity to every one of those impacted from the clan and returned land purportedly taken from them to construct the game facilities.[61]

Qatar has areas of strength for confronted for the treatment of unfamiliar specialists engaged with groundwork for the World Cup, with Pardon Global alluding to “constrained work” and unfortunate working conditions,[62][63] while numerous transient laborers detailed paying huge “enlistment expenses” to acquire employment.[64] The Gatekeeper paper announced that numerous specialists are denied food and water, have their personality papers detracted from them, and that they are not paid on time or by any stretch of the imagination, making some of them as a result slaves. By the time the competition is held, the Guardian has estimated that up to 4,000 workers may die from inadequate safety measures and other causes. The Qatari government implemented new labor reforms to improve working conditions from 2015 to 2021. These reforms included the elimination of the kafala system and establishing a minimum wage for all employees. However, Amnesty International claims that the living and working conditions of foreign workers have not improved in recent years.[65] Qatar is the smallest nation by area to ever host a FIFA World Cup; Switzerland, host of the 1954 tournament, is the next smallest nation by area. Switzerland is more than three times as big as Qatar and only required to host 16 teams instead of 32. In addition, Qatar became the only nation outside of Uruguay and Italy, the hosts of the first two World Cups, to receive a FIFA World Cup despite having never qualified for one: In 1996, Japan was given the rights to co-host the 2002 World Cup. Despite qualifying for the 1998 tournament, Japan never made it to the finals. Six of the tournament’s eight venues are in the Doha metropolitan area. This marks the first World Cup since 1930 in which the majority of venues were in one city. Qatar’s World Cup chief executive Nasser Al Khater stated that the purpose of the designated sobering-up areas was to ensure the fans’ safety.[68] If a fan is sent to the “sobering up” zone, they will be permitted to leave when they can demonstrate clearheaded behavior.[69] Multiple news agencies described the controversy as a “cultural clash” between social conservatism and Islamic morality against the “norms” of secular Western liberal democracies.[15]