Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Becks Qa-tarred with same brush?
IT was good while it lasted… but if reports are true, those Golden Balls could now be tarnished beyond all recognition.
David Beckham has apparently signed a £150million deal to be the face of the Qatar World Cup.
This would be unforgivable. Qatar has a shameful human rights record, and the country’s mistreatment of migrant workers – ie those making the World Cup possible – is incredibly distressing.
Seems that when it comes to ethics, UNICEF ambassador Beckham is happy to bend them too.
Some would say this deal is not just morally bankrupt, it’s embarrassingly out of date and unfashionable.
Modern footballers like Marcus Rashford are all about using their platform for good, not greedily profiting from a questionable regime.
Young players – including Rashford, Chelsea’s Reece James, who has devoted time and money to the Felix Project Food Bank, and Raheem Sterling, set to launch a foundation to help disadvantaged teens – are redefining what it means to be a football star.
By comparison, Beckham looks past it and out of touch. Clearly £150m is a lot of money, but come on, it’s not like you or I being offered this kind of cash.
Surely one of the main advantages to the unimaginable wealth the Beckhams already have is the freedom to be choosy? By being on
their payroll, Beckham could be colluding with a brutal regime in the act of “sportswashing” – where countries host large sporting events to airbrush their past and improve their image.
So David Beckham may be helping Qatar sportswash their bad deeds – but who is going to sportswash him afterwards?
Plus, in the week of COP26, getting into bed with a country for which petroleum and natural gas account for more than 70% of total government revenue – aka is the opposite of green – makes this a multi-layered terrible idea.
Who’s advising David these days? Brooklyn?
The way the two million-strong migrant workforce in Qatar are treated – and the appalling conditions they work in, while temperatures soar to 41.5 degrees – has come under the spotlight over the last decade, during which time an average of 12 workers a week from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka have died. Last March the minimum wage was finally raised – to 1,000 Qatari riyals (£200) a month. So it would only take a worker a mere 62,500 years to earn what Beckham is being paid.
What we should be talking about now is whether the England football team should have anything to do with Qatar’s World Cup at all, not one of our most prominent stars’ blessing being bought to facilitate it.
Maybe David
Beckham has signed this deal to bring attention to the plight of the migrant workers, and he plans to donate the
£150m to the families of those who have lost their lives.
If not, this is just too foul for words.