Les stades de la Coupe du monde 2022, reflets d’un Qatar à deux vitesses

Abstract

This paper focuses on an unpublished topic, the 2022 World Cup stadiums. The somewhat unusual research subject will tend to question their role as real protagonists of this sporting event. Through this article the main purpose is to understand how Qatar thinks its new sports venues. These stadiums turn out to be central elements of its world communication by a staging of its territory, but also symbolic places in the construction of the representation of its power within the Gulf and its society. As future centers of attention, in 2022, these stadiums are also a reflection of many barriers that the emirate faces in the recent direction of its foreign policy on a global scale. Reflections of the acceleration of the political time of the emirate on the world stage, the stadiums also testify to the gap which persists between the global image that the power tries to project from Qatar and the internal realities to its society. Finally, by their centrality during the next World Cup these stadiums concentrate the struggles for leadership that are playing out on the Gulf political scene and so around this major event. Beyond these new sports venues, the goal is to put in an historical and geopolitical perspective the development of sport in Qatar to be able to understand the issues and the subtle logic of the recent integration of the emirate within the spheres of the sport show industry.