Tommy Martin: Qatar finals a depressing antidote to World Cup fever

Wales' Gareth Bale (centre) during a training session at The Vale Resort, Hensol. Picture   Nick Potts/PA Wire 

As strains of World Cup fever go, this year’s version is quite mild and not that transmissible.

Usually at this time in a World Cup year you begin to notice mild symptoms. Pulse racing over the new Panini sticker album. Slight anxiety about an injured superstar. Headaches caused by the launch of a particularly lurid goalkeeper’s jersey. Even Ireland’s now-regular absence cannot inoculate against the lurking pathogen that will, by mid-summer, develop into full-blown delirium.

Of course, there is no summer World Cup this year – the least of the many wrong things about the 2022 tournament. That a World Cup is not held in the northern hemisphere summer is weird and awkward, but only because of ancient Euro-centric power structures. So the Prem has to take a six-week break – get over it, no-one died.

Oh, wait a minute, lots of people died. The subject of migrant worker deaths in the construction of World Cup stadiums has loomed over the madcap staging of football’s big jamboree in Qatar way back since the laughable moment in 2010 when Fifa awarded the tournament to the tiny Gulf state.

The question of just how miserable and dangerous life is for the impoverished workers shipped in to make this almighty folly happen has been endlessly batted back and forth. Safe to say that life is still miserable and dangerous, just a bit less so, thanks to generous reforms by the Qatari authorities aimed at making slightly fewer of them end up miserable and dead. So let’s be thankful for that. Jogo bonito, and all that.

But calculating the true number of poor souls ground into the desert dust for a monstrosity of a sporting spectacle is no way to get you into the World Cup mood. You’d think this week, being the first international window of the year, we might hear the distant sound of samba drums and the echoes of glories past, Jules Rimet still gleaming et cetera. Instead, the talk has been resolutely grim, downbeat and not very Roger Milla-dancing-at-the-corner-flag.

Gareth Southgate – admittedly never a man to evoke the sense that a global fiesta is about to kick off – was processing it all in his usual manner. The England manager likes to work through the fine details of potentially thorny issues, teasing out the angles and differing viewpoints so that by the end everyone is too bored to feel angry anymore.

Southgate has done the groundwork, talking to NGOs and Amnesty International about how he and his players should feel and behave in the face of the not-exactly-Mexico-1970 vibe that awaits in Qatar later this year. Presumably figuring that most England fans don’t care much about the fate of migrant workers from distant lands, he emphasised instead how a country where homosexuality is illegal and women’s rights are restricted might not be ready to party.

“There are the issues that potentially threaten our fans when they travel: the rights of women and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in particular,” Southgate said. “Sadly, through discussions that I’ve had, I don’t think some of those communities are going to go and that’s a great shame.

“We stand for inclusivity as a team – that’s been the big driver of a lot of the stances we’ve taken in the last couple of years – and it would be horrible to think some of our fans feel they can’t go because they feel threatened or they’re worried about their safety.” 

Doesn’t it all just make you want to paint your face and dance with Colombians in a fountain?

But it was Louis Van Gaal who made the point far clearer than a measured Southgate PowerPoint ever could. Van Gaal is both old and Dutch, which is a lethal combination when it comes to being blunt.

“It’s ridiculous that we are going to play in a country – how does Fifa say it? To develop the football there,” said Van Gaal, whose Dutch side begin their build-up to the tournament with friendlies against Denmark and Germany, two other nations vocally critical of Qatar’s hosting. 

“That is bullshit. But it doesn’t matter – it’s about money, commercial interests. That’s the main motive of Fifa.” 

It seems that when it comes to shitness as a World Cup host, Qatar offers squad depth any international manager would crave. You can take your pick of dead migrant workers, repression of dissent, persecution of LGBTQ+ people, inequality for women, brazen Fifa corruption, and the sheer bonkers notion of building eight massive stadiums in a country the combined size of Cork and Kerry. That’s before you even get to the fact that it is plonked in the middle of the traditional European football season.

All this as a handful of nations tonight begin battling it out for the last remaining places at the party (wearily blows vuvuzela). Sadly, the European playoffs are struggling to generate that sense of quadrennial soccer-related giddiness, mainly because one of the nations meant to be competing in them has recently invaded another one. The expulsion of Russia and the fact that Ukraine has other things on its mind right now is just another thread in the 2022 World Cup’s joyless tapestry.

And while, on the face of it, this is one thing you can’t blame on Fifa or the charming Qataris, it does all fit into one big jigsaw of geopolitical chicanery. Take yourself back to that surreal day in Zurich in 2010 when the names of Russia and Qatar came out of the envelope to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and the only people who looked truly happy were Vladimir Putin and the Emir of Qatar. This year’s tournament feels less like a global celebration than some nightmarish symbolic crescendo, the end point of decades of fossil fuel dependency and humanity’s self-destructive cult of corruption, cynicism and greed.

Who knows, by November maybe football will triumph over all this and we will be swept away as usual. Perhaps love will get the world in motion, but at the moment it feels like Qatar might be the antidote for World Cup fever.