Irish Examiner View: Fifa World Cup a test of character for football

Goodness knows what condition football will be in after four more years of Fifa management, let alone eight.

FIfa president Gianni Infantino's 60-minute monologue has been the subject of derision. Picture: Nick Potts/PA Wire

Opera, it is sometimes said, is a noisy way of telling a silly story. 

It must have been the Italian lineage of Fifa president Gianni Infantino that persuaded him into that risibly performative rendition of his opening remarks for the 22nd World Cup at the Doha media centre: “Today I feel Qatari; today I feel Arab...” ad infinitum.

🔴 #LIVE: ⚽🏆 "Today I feel Qatari, today I feel Arab, today I feel African, today I feel gay, today I feel disabled, today I feel a migrant worker", said FIFA President Giovanni Infantino ahead of the #WorldCup ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/u3p1hnEn9X

— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) November 20, 2022

Infantino’s 60-minute monologue made his predecessor, Sepp Blatter, appear a model of understatement.

At least matches are under way now, for those who wish to watch them, and the opening ceremony was captivating, as it can be when enough money is applied. 

The encounter between Morgan Freeman and 20-year-old Qatari influencer Ghanim Al Muftah, who has caudal regression syndrome, which inhibits the development of the lower half of the body, was genuinely startling and almost Beckettian in nature.

Morgan Freeman and Ghanim al Muftah during the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup 2022 at the Al Bayt Stadium, Al Khor. Picture: Adam Davy/PA Wire

That the Qatar national team, frozen by the weight of expectation, lost the showpiece opening game should come as no surprise, and it can be added to a list of predictabilities within a tournament which should not be taking place. Predictable that the sport’s senior official should deliver a lecture from his own peculiar definition of moral high ground, the same location he used to urge a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict while the World Cup takes place. 

A ceasefire would undoubtedly favour Vladimir Putin, from whom Infantino received the Order of Friendship in 2019 after Russia hosted the World Cup, a tournament which also, given what we now understand about Moscow, should have been cancelled.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino and Russia president Vladimir Putin at the G20 Leaders' Summit in Buenos Aires in 2018. Picture: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images)

The next World Cup has been enlarged to accommodate 48 teams rather 32, and this bloated competition is not scheduled to reappear in Europe any time soon. 2026 is timetabled for North America and Mexico, and 2030 will likely go to South America or North Africa.

Goodness knows what condition the sport will be in after four more years, let alone eight.

Whether it can survive slapping down sponsors, humiliating its members, loading more meaningless games onto players while club soccer foots the bill, and issuing diktats about what can be said and worn is an open question.

Just 24 hours before England were due to face Iran, the Football Association was told by Fifa that its regulations do not allow for Harry Kane to wear the ‘OneLove’ armband which expresses solidarity with marginalised people, including the criminalised gay community, in Qatar. The governing body says it has to approve any “change in equipment” worn by players, raising concerns among European sides that their team captains could be booked as soon as the game kicks off.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, it was a requirement to perform the Nazi salute at events attended by Adolf Hitler. Some nations did so and others, to their credit, did not. The armband challenge may be an early dilemma for the authorities and a test of character for the older soccer nations.

World Cup 2022 will need to stem the growing disenchantment of supporters. 

For now, courtesy of Infantino, it is an edifice built on sand. It doesn’t need much to go wrong for supporters to turn away from a sport which gives every appearance of being captured by bad actors.