Fifa boss Infantino hits out at Qatar’s critics

Gianni Infantino said he feels gay. That he feels like a woman. That he feels like a migrant worker. He lectured Europeans for criticising Qatar’s human rights record and defended the host country’s last-minute decision to ban beer from World Cup stadiums.

The Fifa president delivered a onehour tirade on the eve of the World Cup’s opening match, and then spent about 45 minutes answering questions from media about the Qatari government’s actions and a wide-range of other topics.

‘‘Today I feel Qatari,’’ Infantino said yesterday at the start of his first news conference of the World Cup. ‘‘Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.’’

Infantino later shot back at one reporter who noticed he left women out of his unusual declaration.

‘‘I feel like a woman,’’ the Fifa president responded.

Qatar has faced a litany of criticism since 2010, when it was chosen to host the biggest football tournament in the world.

Migrant labourers who built Qatar’s World Cup stadiums often worked long hours under harsh conditions and were subjected to discrimination, wage theft and other abuses as their employers evaded accountability, London-based rights group Equidem said in a 75-page report released this month.

Infantino defended the country’s immigration policy, and praised the government for bringing in migrants to work.

‘‘We in Europe, we close our borders and we don’t allow practically any worker from those countries, who earn obviously very low income, to work legally in our countries,’’ Infantino said. ‘‘If Europe would really care about the destiny of these people, these young people, then Europe could also do as Qatar did.

‘‘But give them some work. Give them some future. Give them some hope. But this moral-lesson giving, one-sided, it is just hypocrisy.’’

Qatar is governed by a hereditary emir who has absolute say over all governmental decisions and follows an ultraconservative form of Islam known as Wahhabism.

Infantino continued to hit the Qatari government’s talking points of turning criticism back onto the West.

‘‘What we Europeans have been doing for the past 3000 years we should be apologising for the next 3000 years before we start giving moral lessons to people,’’ Infantino said to hundreds of international media. –