FIFA created this sick joke of a Qatar World Cup. Begging us to look away now is laughable

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.

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 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.

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.

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 and media — by telling us to be silent about other issues. Those who have pointed out the injustices of the tournament being awarded to Qatar have long grown inured to attempts to shut them up. Some, risibly, have told football reporters that if they do not like the regime, they should not cover the tournament.

To suggest that you should not report on an event because you do not agree with the regime of the state that is hosting it is a facile, stupid argument made by dolts. Journalists — yes, even sports journalists — are supposed to be there to shine a light on the bad things as well as the beauty.

Telling journalists to stay at home if they do not agree with the tournament being staged in Qatar is just another strand of the growing attempt to silence reporting on issues some people would rather were ignored. While you’re sitting at your keyboards, by the way, maybe you should both write a letter to whoever it is who is paying supporters’ groups, including 40 fans from England, to attend the tournament with instructions to deliver positive messages about the experience, sing certain songs when requested and report critical social media posts.

You say in your letter you want the World Cup to ‘welcome and embrace everyone’ but you will agree, I am sure, the instruction about the social media posts, in particular, carries rather sinister connotations and flies in the face of that wish.

AS FOR the songs that the England fans’ group have been requested to sing, I am curious to know whether the desired repertoire includes recent favourites such as ‘Southgate Out’, the special ‘No Surrender’ version of our national anthem and the old staple, ‘Ten German Bombers’.

Quite why anyone involved with the running of the tournament would need to pay spies to report on the behaviour of fellow fans is something I hope you seek clarity over. Quite how that kind of dynamic will encourage us to focus on the football is something else I believe merits your inquiry.

And when you have finished that letter, why don’t you write another one to the 32 teams. Don’t try to shut them up this time. Don’t make it a demand. Make it an apology. Tell them you’re sorry. Tell them FIFA made a dreadful mistake. Tell them you have learned your lesson. Tell them that football will not be betrayed like this again.