In any World Cup, performing at the opening ceremony is a sign of pride for the participating artists. Along with the opening of the Olympic Games and above the Super Bowl final, no other music-sports show guarantees such an absolute global impact. The Colombian Shakira knows it well. She has performed in three soccer World Cups (Germany, South Africa and Brazil) and managed to create a hymn, the waka-waka, which made her immensely popular on five continents.
Shakira, after a painful year, marked by her fiscal problems and her relationship conflicts, once again saw herself before the opportunity to further cement her universal fame and spectacularly increase her checking account. But as much as FIFA and the organizers try to paint the host country as a hospitality paradise, Qatar is becoming a toxic name that causes damage to artists’ reputations that they prefer to avoid.
The singers who are going to participate in the show prior to the opening match have not yet been announced, although Shakira’s presence, which was never confirmed, was taken for granted. It was not the first time that the Barranquilla star had dealings with the Qatari royal family, which has been, since 2019, one of the sponsors of the Pies Descalzos Foundation, which she founded in 1997 to help child victims of the political conflict in her country. But if on that occasion the charitable objective could justify the agreement with the emirs, now it is only about football, music and money. A lot of money. Absurd amounts of money.
Shakira has many followers in the LGTBI community, to which she winks continuously, and many of them would feel betrayed if they saw their diva somehow paying homage to the emirs of Qatar, a country that neglects women and in which homosexuality is considered a crime punishable by seven years in prison.
The tournament organizers have worked to sell a friendlier image of the emirate, ensuring that everyone is welcome as long as gays keep their amorous effusions at bay, a note that is very uncomfortable for Shakira and for most of the greats. stars, who, regardless of their ideology or their particular opinions, live pending their image and try to please everyone. After all, it must be a difficult drink to go out and sing happy tunes a week after listening to one of the ambassadors of the 2022 World Cup, the former Qatari soccer player Khalid Salman, explaining on the German channel ZDF that homosexuality is not only a sin , but also “a mental deviation.”
So Shakira, if she ever had the intention of participating in her fourth World Cup, she has thought better of it. She has not explained her reasons, she has simply let her “family environment” tell Agencia Efe that she will not go to Qatar, neither for the inauguration nor for any other act.
Nor will we see Dua Lipa in Doha. The British model and singer, of Kosovar Albanian origin, did not even allow her phone to ring. Given the rumors that placed her this Sunday on the grass of the Al Bayt stadium, Dua Lipa came out of the drag and made things clear: «There is a lot of speculation about whether I will be performing at the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar. I will not be acting nor have I ever been involved in any negotiations with them. I will be supporting England from afar. I look forward to visiting Qatar when it has fulfilled all the human rights promises it made when it won the right to host the World Cup.”
Dua Lipa, according to her own confession, was not called by the organization, but they did call Rod Stewart. It was an irreproachable choice. Rod, the old rocker with the raspy voice and frizzy hair, loves soccer. He is a rabid supporter of Celtic from Glasgow and during his youth he dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, but it never even crossed his mind to land in Doha to sing one of his mythical songs. He himself told it in an interview for the ‘Sunday Times’, in which he revealed what they had offered: more than a million dollars. «I rejected it. It didn’t seem right to go.” Stewart went further and also proposed the elimination of Iran, one of the qualified teams, for supplying weapons to Russia.
Shakira, Dua Lipa and Rod Stewart would have been delighted to sing anywhere else, but Qatar has a bad reputation and if the emirate wanted to clean up its image with the World Cup, it doesn’t seem to be succeeding, at least for now. Even the opening party, an innocent ceremony in which the host country sticks out its chest to offer itself to the world with a smile, is going awry for them. It is unusual that the entire roster of artists is not yet known, although there is speculation about the performance of the Black Eyed Peas, a Korean K-Pop group and Robbie Williams, who has already signed a performance at the Doha Golf Club for next December 8.
The resignation of other colleagues for ethical reasons increases the pressure on those who have agreed to sing on such a stained stage. Criticism reaches David Beckham, who agreed to be the official ambassador of the tournament and whose image of pristine elegance appears in various advertisements for Qatar 2022. The former Real Madrid soccer player defended his participation because of his conviction that “the soccer field can be a platform for progress. This conviction may have been decisively influenced by the 170 million euros that, according to the newspaper ‘The Guardian’, David has received from the Gulf emirate as payment for his services.
Although the spotlights point directly to the opening ceremony, it is not the only limited area for concerts in World Cup Doha. With less pressure from the media, but with the same responsibility, the Colombian reggaeton player Maluma and the Lebanese Myriam Fares, one of the most popular Arab singers of the moment, will open the Fan Zone today, located in Al Bidda park, four steps from La Corniche, a kind of independent republic in which they assure that you will even be able to buy and drink beer. The two have composed, together with the rapper Niki Minaj, one of the official themes of the tournament, ‘Tukoh Taka’.
Maluma does not ask himself as many questions as Rod Stewart or Dua Lipa about human rights. He, at least on his official Instagram account, confesses happily: «Colombia is going to the World Cup. We are going to sing the official song of the World Cup at the ‘fan event’. We’re leaving Qatar. Long live the football party!” In later days, Calvin Harris or Trinidad Cardona, an American blues singer whose greatest hit is titled, what a coincidence, ‘Dinero’, will pass through this same stage.
With barely 24 hours left before the start of the World Cup, it is not yet known what the ceremony that will precede the first match of the tournament will be like, a Qatar-Ecuador that will soon be thrown away does not seem particularly exciting either. It is very probable that, with the help of a checkbook, the organizers have managed to convince some flashy stars to show off tomorrow at the Al Bayt stadium, but the resignations of Rod Stewart, Shakira or Dua Lipa show that this World Cup has become an uncomfortable, even toxic tournament, capable of eroding the most solidly established prestige.
