London - That Fifa president Gianni Infantino in an unprecedented monologue resorted to accusing the West of “hypocrisy” in its reporting about host Qatar’s human rights record in a press conference on the eve of the Fifa World Cup simply reinforces the fact that Qatar 2022 is the most controversial one ever organised by football’s governing body.
Never mind Fifa and its constituent members – never before has the beautiful game been subjected to such moral soul searching, hopefully jettisoning such naiveties that we shouldn’t mix politics and sports, in this case football, the world’s most popular game.
The reality is that international sport, especially the richest game of them all – football – has long been hijacked by governments, administrators, corporate and commercial interests, elite clubs and the media, especially broadcast outlets, to suit their own nefarious agendas and narrow self-interests in a complex web of policy ambiguities, inaction, inadequate disclosure and lack of transparency.
The governance of Fifa in the last two decades bears witness that the above shenanigans respect no borders, nationalities, race, creed, culture and until recently, gender.
The federation, like other counterparts, is adept at adopting the latest trends, including kicking out racism, fostering gender parity and diversity, but at its core lies a fundamental anachronism of an elite club run by a cohort of largely middle-class men more interested in self-enrichment, aggrandisement and sports washing, some acting at the behest of their political masters who are more interested in using the staging of the tournament to attract political and national prestige.
How convenient and some would say self-serving that some Fifa officials including erstwhile president Sepp Blatter are now claiming that they did not support Doha’s bid in 2010, and thought that awarding the 2022 tournament to Qatar was a mistake.
Hardly had the first ball been kicked off in Sunday’s opener between Qatar and Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium, and already Fifa and the Qatar Supreme Organising Committee had resorted to several U-turns that would had made the UK Conservative Party proud.
Sunday’s opener, for instance, was originally scheduled as the third match of the tournament. But it was rescheduled to ensure the host country featured as it has been traditional in past tournaments. There have been other retractions on the welcoming of LGBTQ fans and the selling of alcohol in the various stadiums.
The consensus is that thus far Qatar 2022 is the most poorly organised World Cup tournament, and fans have been subjected to gratuitous over-pricing and a shortage of affordable accommodation, heavy-handed autocratic policing and security surveillance, and anachronistic visa regulations that have soured the experience of die-hard fans, let alone scared off thousands of others already feeling the squeeze of a global recession and cost-of-living crisis.
Infantino’s gripe was uncharacteristically brazen: “We have been taught many lessons from Europeans and the Western world. I am European.
For what we have been doing for 3 000 years around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3 000 years before giving moral lessons.”
For Infantino to equate the serious concerns raised by critics and millions of football fans to “gingerism” because he “knows what it means to be discriminated against” after being bullied as a child because he had red hair and freckles shows his sheer lack of empathy and one-sided understanding of the issues, with due respect to all the redheads of the world.
What’s in a name? I have not seen any Fifa press release or explanatory note on the simple matter of how to pronounce the name of the tournament’s host country.
Qatar, the “q” is guttural, is not pronounced “Catarrh” as most outside the region tend do, as if it is the snot to be expelled from a congested sinus. Imagine “Fifa World Cup – The Emirate of Snot 2022?” The hubris never ends.
Infantino is under the delusion that “Qatar is ready, it will be the best World Cup ever”.
We await with bated breath!
Parker is an economist based in London
Cape Times