sport news FIFA created this sick joke of a Qatar World Cup... begging us to look away now ... trends now
Dear President and Secretary-General,
The FIFA World Cup in Qatar is now just around the corner and excitement about the world’s premier football festival should be building globally as we count down the days to kick-off in Doha on Sunday, November 20.
I would like to commend you both on your latest attempt to silence dissent surrounding the staging of a tournament awarded in that magnificent carnival of venality and obfuscation 12 years ago. You must be very proud.
I applaud you, most sincerely, for writing a letter to try to neuter opposition rather than cutting your critics up with a bonesaw, a tactic which, as you know, has found favour with one of our club owners in the Premier League.
FIFA have written a letter asking the footballing world to focus on the game at the World Cup
The tournament begins in two weeks and has been dominated by bad press surrounding human rights issues in Qatar
Your restraint, in such trying circumstances, is appreciated.
Your letter to each of the 32 participating teams asking them ‘please, let’s now focus on the football’ struck a chord with me and with many others. I would love nothing more, I promise you, than to focus on the football and to leave everything else at check-in at Gatwick next week.
But the truth is that FIFA, the organisation you command, have made that impossible. The truth is that this tournament was born out of corruption. The truth is that its stadiums and infrastructure have been built by modern-day slaves.
The English FA, as well as 12 other European nations, will produce a joint-statement this weekend in response to FIFA's plea for teams at the World Cup to focus on football
The truth is that holding it at this time of year is a betrayal of players who have no time to recover from injuries sustained in the middle of their domestic seasons. The truth is that it is being staged by a regime resolutely opposed to the diversity you claim, so laughably, to espouse.
And the truth is that, instead of excitement building globally, as you imagine in your letter, that excitement continues to be polluted by the effluent expelled by the legions of public relations firms hired to try to polish this tawdry spectacle. Excitement has curdled into ambivalence and even indifference for many.
Part of what you have done by allowing the World Cup to be hijacked in this way is ensure that the standing of international football takes another hit in its ongoing struggle to withstand the incursions of the club game.
Awarding a summer tournament to a desert state was decried as a sick joke when the decision was made in December 2010 and even though it has been gerrymandered into winter since, it remains a sick joke now. It demeans FIFA and it demeans the world game and no amount of letter-writing will change that.
The Football Association has united with nine other European countries to create the OneLove campaign - although FIFA are yet to approve the plan two weeks from the tournament
You ask that football not be ‘dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists’ but it was FIFA who dragged football into this battle and it was FIFA who dragged the rest of us into it as well.
Decisions have consequences. The organisation should have known when they awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar that this was not a controversy that would die away after a few weeks. FIFA created this. Don’t ask us to look the other way now. It is way too late for that.
I hope that the football at Qatar 2022 is wonderful. I hope there are inspiring storylines revolving around the greatness of Lionel Messi and the emergence of new stars such as England’s Jude Bellingham. I hope there are goals and moves and passes and saves and dramas that we will cherish for years to come.
It is reprehensible that they have taken football to a repressive state and lecture us on morals
But I also hope we don’t forget the human rights issues surrounding this tournament as soon as the first ball is kicked. Newcastle have had a good start to the season in England so suddenly everybody seems to have forgotten that they are bankrolled by one of the most repressive regimes on the planet.
That must not happen in Qatar. Don’t insult us — supporters
