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Morocco line-up during the 2022 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match against Portugal in Doha, Qatar.
What’s it worth to crush it at the World Cup?
Whether or not underdog Morocco beats France in the World Cup semifinals on Wednesday, one thing is sure: Becoming the first African or Arab nation to get this far in the biggest sporting event on the planet stands to get Morocco more than on-field glory in Qatar.
The Atlas Lions probably didn't expect to have such an amazing run, but their overperformance is no coincidence. It’s the fruit of decades of heavy investment by the kingdom in developing its players as part of Morocco’s broader sports diplomacy.
Hold up. What is sports diplomacy? It’s “when the acts of diplomacy — communication, representation, and negotiation — intersect with the sports world, whether it's in the arena or outside of it," says Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, who knows a thing or two about sports diplomacy because she teaches it at NYU.
It can be formal, when carried out by governments or by an athlete representing a country, or informal — like the privately-run NBA’s push to make basketball a global game. But the objective is always the same: to get your country or sport noticed so you can "sell" it to the world.
Although success in sports ≠ success in politics, it does boost a national brand. A good example is Croatia, a country of less than 4 million that's only been independent for 30 years. Four years ago, it’s often said that France won the World Cup but Croatia won the hearts of fans around the world by making it all the way to the final of the tournament in Russia.
Its fairytale run put Croatia on everyone’s radar. According to one study, during the 2018 tournament visits to the tourism website soared by 250% — a big deal for a nation that makes 20% of its GDP from foreign visitors.
Symbolism matters, too. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Croatia's president at the time, went all in on showing her support for the national team in Russia. She won global praise for traveling in economy class with fans, gifting world leaders with customized jerseys, and braving a downpour to comfort the players after losing to France in Moscow. The president made her country look cool — exactly what you want to promote foreign investment and tourism.
(Unfortunately for Grabar-Kitarović, she became more famous abroad than popular with Croatian voters, narrowly losing re-election in 2020.)
Morocco is the Croatia of 2022. "It's fair to say there will be a marginal soft power benefit for Morocco. Their winning streak has generated a lot of excitement," says Eurasia Group analyst Sofia Meranto. "The Arab world and African spectators are united in backing them, and leaders across the region were quick to express their joy at the team making the semifinals. Many other fans now also see the Atlas Lions as the favored underdog."
The government is eager to cash in on the team's success to get the most bang for its sports diplomacy buck. A clear sign is the slick video from the Moroccan tourism board dominating halftime TV ads during the tournament across Europe.
This is a unique opportunity for Morocco to showcase itself to tourists. Before COVID, the country welcomed almost 20 million of them, with tourism accounting for more than 10% of GDP and 17% of the Moroccan workforce. The sector has recovered, but only at 80% of pre-pandemic levels — so Morocco would certainly appreciate a World Cup bump to get its tourism groove back ... and maybe even further develop its cash cow.
"It's great to make an imprint, but you want to do more than just enter the history books," Krasnoff explains. "You want to sustain that in order to get the maximum mileage out of your investment."
But investing in sports diplomacy can also backfire. Over a decade ago, Qatar not only spent big to secure the right to host the World Cup but also launched BeIN, a global sports channel under the Al-Jazeera network, and purchased French soccer club PSG.
Since then, the Qataris have gotten blowback over the alleged bribes involved in their bid as well as their dodgy human rights record. BeIN has lost the rights to air many top competitions, and traditional European fans have soured on PSG for being nouveau riche. Money might lure mega-stars like Leo Messi to Paris, but it won’t buy the respect of romantics who just love the Beautiful Game.
So, who'll win the sports diplomacy World Cup in 2022? The stakes are very different for the host country and Morocco.
Off the pitch, uber-rich and regional soft power heavyweight Qatar can claim credit for organizing the World Cup that featured the best-ever run for an Arab team. It’s too soon to say whether the tournament put a dent in the country’s global standing or rather delivered precisely what the Qataris hoped for: lots of attention and future partnerships.
But on the pitch, less affluent and influential Morocco has captured the imagination of Arab and non-Arab fans alike — with none of Qatar’s political baggage.
Putin would rather die than admit defeat in Ukraine, says former Croatian president
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović knows a thing or two about Vladimir Putin, who she met multiple times when she was Croatia's president. So, how does she see the future of Russia's war in Ukraine?
It's not looking good.
In a Global Stage livestream conversation held at United Nations headquarters, Grabar-Kitarović says that Putin is unlikely to back down from a "special military operation" driven by what the Russian leader sees as Western humiliation during the Cold War.
Although the war has weakened Russia's economy and military and made the country a junior partner to China, the former Croatian president thinks Putin “would rather die than admit defeat."
Since Ukraine will also not cede an inch of sovereign territory, Grabar-Kitarović believes the fighting will continue. And a ceasefire won't stop Putin from trying to realize his ultimate ambition of taking over all of Ukraine.
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Members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces watch the FIFA World Cup 2022 qualification playoff semi-final soccer match between Scotland and Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Ukraine eyes a Qatar ticket, CAR abolishes executions, Croatia gets into the ‘Zone, Conservatives romp in South Korea
1: With their homeland ravaged by war, Ukraine’s national soccer team is putting up a stunning fight of its own at the World Cup qualifiers – the “yellow-blues” are now just one win away from qualifying for a ticket to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar later this year. They play Wales on Sunday.
170: The Central African Republic has become the latest of about 170 countries to abolish the death penalty. Last year executions around the world jumped by about 20%, though overall use of the death penalty has been declining for more than a decade.
20: Croatia will officially join the Eurozone next year, making it the 20th country to adopt the euro as its currency. Croatia has been a member of the European Union since 2013.
12: South Korea's conservative People Power Party of recently elected President Yoon Suk-yeol won 12 out of 17 races for big-city mayors and governors in a significant boost for Yoon’s power just three weeks into his tenure.
What We’re Watching: Ethiopian emergency, Euro bubbly war, US Fed vs inflation
Things go from bad to worse in Ethiopia. Ethiopia's embattled PM Abiy Ahmed has imposed a state of emergency and called on ordinary citizens to take up arms, after a swift advance by the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front put the rebels within striking distance of the capital, Addis Ababa. For a year now, Abiy's forces have been at war with the TPLF over the militant group's demands for the Tigray region to have more autonomy from the central government. The TPLF ran all of Ethiopia for decades, but they lost power after a popular uprising led to Abiy's appointment in 2018. The current conflict has seen possible war crimes by all sides, but the allegations against Ethiopian government forces in particular have prompted the US to revoke the country's preferential trade status, effective next year. All of this puts Abiy in a very tough position: last November he launched what he thought would be a quick war to squelch the TPLF, but now he is losing ground badly and could soon lose a critical source of economic support. Does he pull out the peace pipe or look for bigger guns? It seems like ages ago this guy won a Nobel Prize, but no heroes are safe these days. And with neighboring Sudan in political turmoil as well, things are looking dicey in the strategically-significant Horn of Africa.
Italy & Croatia spar over Prosecco. It may not be as famous as its bubbly cousin champagne, but Italy's Prosecco is actually the world's top-selling wine. And now Rome wants to make sure no one else can sell it if it's not from the Italian town of Prosecco near Trieste. No way, say Croatian winemakers, who claim that what they call "Prošek" was first made 300 years before the Italian version. The Croatians want EU protections to market the stuff under that name, but the Italians say that would just confuse people. Fizzing things up further, it turns out that Prosecco and Prošek are made with different grapes, and share little in common other than etymology and a starring role at brunch. And confusing things even more, Italians of Slovene origin love another sparkling wine called Prosekar. The dispute is a big deal because EU rules on product origin help Italy sell roughly 550 million bottles of Prosecco for $2.8 billion each year. We'll be sipping a glass of any variety of Adriatic bubbly while we wait for the EU to rule on the issue in a few months.
Fed begins "taper" as inflation won't go away. The US Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday it would cut back on its monthly purchases of Treasury bonds, the first step towards pulling back its extraordinary aid to the economy as COVID-induced inflation remains stubbornly high. Since the pandemic began, the Fed has been buying up some $120 billion worth of US government debt each month in order to boost borrowing/spending and hiring while keeping interest rates low. But now that the US economy is in better shape — despite ongoing supply-chain disruptions, that is — the Fed is worried about inflation. In fact, the Fed now (finally) admits that prices are likely going to continue rising longer than it initially predicted. We're not economists, but basically what happens next depends on how bad inflation gets: if prices keep going up, the Fed will slash its bond-buying even more, and if that doesn't work it'll take the more drastic step of raising interest rates.