Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BRIANREADE Anger over human rights should not be aimed at Qatar or players..it’s FIFA that has blood on its hands
At the heart of football
FIRST the good news, if you fancy going to next year’s World Cup in Qatar.
You can drink alcohol in your hotel and in fanzones featuring live bands, the tube system is world-class, and the desert sun won’t be so fierce you spend three weeks in your hotel due to your skin melting on day one.
Now the bad news, if a visit to last season’s Club World Cup is anything to go by.
It’s £10 a pint in hotels you will struggle to book a room in, bands will have their lyrics censored, the fanzones are miles out of town, so the drinking doesn’t offend locals, and it will generally feel like you’re attending a trade expo in a huge, sanitised shopping mall.
The weather will only be bearable because the competition has been moved to November, paralysing your club’s season for the best part of two months, with potentially harrowing effects.
And you will be asked by friends how you can live with yourself attending a major tournament in a country where, according to latest reports, 6,500 migrant workers have died building the infrastructure that allows a human-rights-denying dictatorship to exploit football for global acceptance.
All because, in 2010, FIFA were so desperate to give the World Cup to an oil-rich country of – at the time – 1.8 million people, they rode roughshod over football’s wishes and human decency, to gorge on gold.
Keep that in mind when you see players and coaches come under pressure to boycott the whole illjudged shebang. The blood is not on their hands but FIFA’S.
While some at the top took bribes, football’s ruling body bent the rules, shafted domestic leagues, allowed rival bids to be sabotaged, and ignored reports of modern-day slaves from South Asia and sub-saharan African countries building the stadiums.
Only last week, Amnesty International wrote to FIFA pointing out that “thousands of migrant workers are still being exploited and abused”.
FIFA invented the lie that Qatar 2022 was about taking the game into unchartered territory and spreading its joy for the common good. But it was always about them, individually and collectively, getting richer.
Qatar is emblematic of a selfelected cabal at the top of football making secretive decisions in its own interests to the detriment of the wider game.
If you think these current World Cup qualifiers are a pain in this truncated, Covid-plagued calendar, wait until autumn when domestic football closes down three times to allow nations to play seven qualifying games, just as fans are finally allowed back into stadiums.
Far too much has gone down, including many of FIFA’S top brass, for next year’s World Cup to suffer a mass boycott. As for protesting England’s potential presence there, don’t bother.
Three years ago, knowing full well what was happening on the ground, the FA signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Qatar, which is shorthand for a cosying-up and blind-eye turning pact to boost their coffers.
Any anger should not be aimed at Qatar. Who can blame them for buying off a morally bankrupt mafia to sports-wash their tainted image when evidence shows Russia did the same? It’s about FIFA. Qatar 2022 (workers on the construction site at the Alwakrah Stadium, left) is the result of a body ruled like a medieval court selling its prized jewel to a country that still observes medieval practices.
Footballers and coaches should not be grilled about this or have their morality questioned if they refuse to bow to grassroots demands to wear pro-human rights slogans on their training gear (Germany players before their game against Iceland, left).
They should never have been put in this position.
And until the day when international players wear T-shirts protesting the misuse of power by the despots at FIFA, it will remain dodgy business as usual.