Koch Featured in Al Jazeera Documentary on the Controversy Surrounding FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

July 23, 2026

Al Jazeera

Natalie Koch

Geography & the Environment Department

Central Asia & the Caucasus Initiative

Middle Eastern Studies Program

Government

International Affairs

Middle East & North Africa

Al Jazeera

Natalie Koch

When FIFA announced the decision to have Qatar host the 2022 World Cup, it made history—and triggered one of the fiercest controversies in modern sport. Allegations of corruption, political influence, worker abuse, cultural bias and media double standards followed the tournament for more than a decade.

In the Al Jazeera documentary “Qatar 2022: Judged by standards no other host has faced,” investigaors ask whether international scrutiny exposed legitimate concerns, or whether Qatar was judged by standards rarely applied to other hosts.

Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment, weighs in on a report published by The Guardian ahead of the 2022 World Cup that stated more than 6,500 guest workers died since the event was awarded to the country.

“In fact, that statistic was completely wrong,” Koch says.

“It was not like those deaths were not excess deaths. They were just South Asians who happened to die in Qatar from this time period. But that's how it was portrayed in The Guardian article. And this just was picked up in social media and spun out in lots of different ways because there was a kind of confirmation bias in the West, this idea that these rich Qatari sheikhs, they just oppress their people,” she says. (her comments begin at 26:27)