The outcome of the World Cup group stages showed the teams that advanced without complication were those best prepared mentally and not distracted by political issues, according to the former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger.
Referring to shock exits by Germany, Belgium and Denmark, Wenger, speaking during a technical analysis of the group stages by Fifa, said it was notable the teams that focused on football and started well – such as Brazil, France and England – had easier passages to the last 16.
“The teams who were not disappointing in their first game performance – because when you got to the World Cup you know you have not to lose the first game – are the teams with experience, they have results … they played well in first game,” Wenger said. “The teams as well who were mentally ready and had the mindset to focus on the competition and not on political demonstrations.”
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At the Qatar World Cup there has been an unusual amount of political discussion from teams, with some voicing concerns about the host country’s treatment of migrant labour, its approach to LGBTQ+ rights and Fifa’s threats to penalise players for political statements.
Germany’s soccer federation was the most vocal in pressing for anti-discrimination “OneLove” armbands to be worn by players and said “extreme blackmail” led to Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Wales, England and Switzerland abandoning plans to wear them.
Before their surprise opening defeat by Japan, the Germany team posed for a pre-match photo with their hands on their mouths, alluding to them being silenced by Fifa.
Denmark also made a stand over the armbands and last month wanted to use a training kit with slogans in support for human rights.
Serbia supporters displayed fascist slogans and aimed racist chants towards ethnic Albanians during their side’s match against Switzerland on Friday night, according to an eyewitness account given to the Observer.
The scenes at Stadium 974 in Doha, where Switzerland won 3-2 to secure a last-16 place in a match that spilled over during the second half, raise questions about Fifa’s stewarding and in particular its apparent tolerance of offensive insignia. Hasan Rrahmani arrived at the match wearing an Albanian flag around his neck but says he had it confiscated at the entrance while derogatory nationalist symbols were allowed through. He says he was shown a WhatsApp message that Fifa had sent to security staff containing pictures of items, pictures and phrases that were not allowed.
“I was completely dumbfounded to see the number of fascist slogans, T-shirts and flags,” Rrahmani said. He has shown the Observer photographic evidence of a supporter wearing a green hat closely associated with atrocities committed in the Kosovan and Bosnian wars, and says the man was part of a group in the same attire. Among other items of clothing worn freely around the stadium, he says, were T-shirts reading “From Serbia to Tokyo”, a nationalist slogan employed by Serbian football fans invoked during the wars of the 90s. Rrahmani says police were not interested in complaints relating to the items, or to three-fingered gestures considered offensive in many contexts.
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This is a World Cup like no other. For the last 12 years the Guardian has been reporting on the issues surrounding Qatar 2022, from corruption and human rights abuses to the treatment of migrant workers and discriminatory laws. The best of our journalism is gathered on our dedicated Qatar: Beyond the Football home page for those who want to go deeper into the issues beyond the pitch.
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Fifa may find the supporters’ chants more straightforward to deal with, having issued a public address message in the 77th minute asking for “discriminatory chants and gestures” to cease. Rrahmani says those were audible from an early stage of the evening. “I was shocked at the vitriol, absolutely dumbfounded,” he says. “They were singing the most vile racist chants.”
Among those he says he heard were songs involving the word “Šiptar”, a well-known derogatory term used against Albanians, and a call-and-response routine of “Kill, kill, kill the Albanians”. Fans also sang “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia”, related to their country’s refusal to recognise Kosovan independence, he says. “It would start in one corner and the rest of the fans would pick it up,” Rrahmani said. Such songs are not unfamiliar at matches where tensions between Serbia and Albania have ignited, including the infamous “drone” game in October 2014 when a Euro 2016 qualifier in Belgrade spiralled into chaos.
Rrahmani describes retrieving his flag from a collection point after the game, and also seeing Serbs being handed back some confiscated items. He describes being set upon by “seven or eight” Serbia supporters upon exiting the stadium area. “They shoved me, saying: ‘Go fuck yourself Šiptar,’” he said. “They threw water at me. I tried to walk away but seven or eight big blokes followed me. In the end I ran towards the police, who didn’t do anything. Everything that happened around the evening was just frightening. What I expected to be a good night rekindled all those memories of the past that I thought had gone.” He says the police were polite and reassuring but let the group walk away.
Serbia are already under investigation by Fifa for displaying a flag showing Kosovo as part of their territory, along with the words “We do not surrender”, in their dressing room before facing Brazil last week. Rrahmani says similar flags were visible inside the ground.
“Fifa’s inconsistency shocks me,” he says. “How on earth, in 2022, can you allow fans in a World Cup stadium to shout about killing another nation? I came away feeling marginalised and not welcomed by Fifa.”
Rrahmani emphasises that this was an anomaly in an otherwise enjoyable experience at World Cup stadiums. He was born in Kosovo and lives in London; he has been following England and Wales in Qatar but attended Friday’s match to support Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka, Switzerland players who have Kosovan roots. Their goal celebrations in the same fixture at Russia 2018, forming Albanian “eagle” symbols with their hands, caused controversy and set much of the context for the second-half scenes in Doha.
Xhaka could face investigation for grabbing his genitals in front of the Serbia bench and other figures from both camps may fear censure. An Albania fan was seen being escorted from the stadium during the second half after making the eagle gesture.
Fifa declined to comment about the prospects of disciplinary action or on the issues described by Rrahmani.
Look who we are, we are the dreamers. We make it happen. There is something seductively inane about the soundtrack to Qatar 2022, present in the slogans plastered across its surfaces, the sonic assault of the World Cup PA, the playlist of official anthems, centralised messages, approved corporate machine-feelings.
“Believing is magic” read the words across the back of the T-shirts worn by a column of men filing through the service exit of the vast fibreglass tent that is Al Bayt Stadium in the wee hours of Friday morning. The power of dreams. The power of football. The power of Football Dreams. What could ever be wrong with that?
Across a 12-year process that has generated so many inane slogans – so much love, so much tolerance – Football Dreams is probably the grand-daddy of them all. This was the name given to the outreach element of Qatar’s Aspire Academy during the early days of the baroque procurement process for this World Cup.
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Football Dreams has been slightly lost in the years since, obscured by more immediate issues. But it is worth revisiting now, viewing with the facts laid over one another like an architect’s carbon drawings. A cold case, it makes for remarkable reading with what we know now. There are no smoking guns when it comes to why and how at Qatar 2022, just an endless plume of unexplained smoke. But here is a little more.
With hindsight Football Dreams was always a strange concept. At vast expense (is there another kind?) Qatar sent a team of elite football scouts on a series of people-hunting trips to 15 developing nations, touring villages in their column of SUVs, harvesting children for a Willy Wonka-style golden scholarship to the Aspire school and academy.
Between 2007 and 2014 Qatar screened more than 3.5 million 12- and 13-year-old boys. At its height Football Dreams had six thousand staff and volunteers. Out of this mass of hopeful humanity up to 20 Aspire scholarships were awarded each year, pathway to becoming a Champion In Sport or A Champion In Life (we are, and Qatar can’t emphasise this enough, The Dreamers).
Pelé during a press conference at the Aspire Academy in 2007. Photograph: Abdul Basit/AP
The point of this process was never really clear beyond the messaging. Qatar called it “a humanitarian project”. Pelé lurked vaguely at the fringes. Towards the end there was some charitable work involving mosquito nets and a video that showed Lionel Messi looking worried about malaria. Some human rights bodies likened Football Dreams to people trafficking. Even Sepp Blatter called it “an exploitation” before abruptly changing his mind.
Looking back it seems like a strange and unworkable concept. From a blur of practice games in nations such as Guatemala and Vietnam Qatar planned to unearth star talent. Actual established professional academies spend years trying and failing to do this with endless monitoring and space to bloom late or fall away. Children are vulnerable beings. Sport is unforgiving. This thing, the footballing equivalent of game-hunting from your open helicopter bay door, was never going to work in any serious fashion.
The Dreams programme ran from 2007, plateaued after the winning bid and was shut down in 2014. But Aspire, its launchpad, remains key to Qatar’s sporting ambition.
The Aspire dome is a beautiful soft blue glass curve rising up out of Doha’s eastern suburbs like an igloo of the gods. Speakers pipe the sounds of birdsong across the wider Aspire Zone, which houses a full-size football pitch, accommodation, a school, an Olympic-scale swimming pool, sports science centres.
Chasing it down on foot past the vast craning Khalifa Stadium, following the line of the Italianate-themed shopping mall with indoor gondola lake, there is a familiar feeling of fruitless pursuit. That blue glass horizon peeps out through the gaps in the buildings like the sea over the crest of a hill, never really getting closer.
In the shadow of the Doha Torch, the dome finally reveals itself, the egg that hatched the World Cup. Witness Excitement reads a vast beige sign at the edge of the Zone. Except, there is no excitement here. On the morning after the Qatar national team’s World Cup ended in limp defeat to the Netherlands, the Aspire Zone is shuttered. For now any visible sign of Qatari Aspiration is on hold.
The Aspire Zone in 2015. Photograph: Siddhartha Siva/The Guardian
It should be said Aspire has been a great success on its own terms. The programme to create a Qatar national team was initially under the care of Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, a genuine football fanatic rumoured, as John McManus writes in his wonderful book Inside Qatar, to have suffered insomnia from watching so much football on the banks of screens in his bed chamber.
Qatar does not have an ingrained outdoor sporting culture. Even its winter heat is draining, creeping under your skin like a dose of flu. So Qatar built a kinder blue sky under its dome. Every kid with any kind of talent was enrolled and ranked and rated, the emphasis always on detecting elite potential.
It is an extreme version of the systems rolled out by the British Olympic programmes or Premier League academies. Sport for the few. Sport as entirely outcome-based, sport as an elite level gloss on a sedentary society.
But it worked. Aspire graduates (this is misleading: every player here is an Aspire graduate. Where else are you going to train?) won age-group competitions and then the Asian Cup in 2019, sparking mass celebrations on the Corniche.
This process hit its outer limit in the last two weeks. Hundreds of millions of pounds in the making, every detail refined and finessed, Qatar’s footballers were the most feeble World Cup hosts in men’s tournament history. They had six shots on target. The players looked stunned by the glare. At times there was almost a sense of opponents going easy on them.
In a way it was apt. The Qatar team is essentially a construct, a slogan made flesh, an expert replica of a live sporting culture. It embodies brilliantly the question that hangs over so much at this World Cup. Is this actually real? Qatar wants a World Cup. Qatar wants a turn at the show. Today I feel like … a professional footballer.
But one thing is also clear. Qatar always has a plan. We are the dreamers. But we also make things happen. And this is where Football Dreams re-enters the Aspire picture. The dots have not really been joined. Let us join them here. This is no doubt unfortunate coincidence, yet another case of Qatar unfairly tainted by other people’s corruption. But here are some facts. Of the 15 countries awarded the Football Dreams mission, five were also the home nations of a Fifa executive committee (exco) member. Fifa exco members decide who gets to host a World Cup.
Some were a baffling fit for the programme. This issue floated up at the time and did not really go anywhere. It is mentioned in the Garcia report into Fifa corruption but was then largely lost in the fug. What Garcia did not know, as his report predated the key arrests and bans, is that all five of those Fifa exco members, the Football Dreams converts, have turned out to be demonstrably tainted by corruption. This fact has never really been adequately reverse-engineered into the Football Dreams puzzle. Exhuming its details now, this is what it looks like.
Worawi Makudi was a member of the Fifa exco. Qatar’s Football dreams programme came to his home nation Thailand. He voted in the Qatar World Cup bid. He was banned and fined in 2016 for forgery and falsification but the ban was overturned by Cas after the Thai’s criminal conviction was quashed.
Worawi Makudi of Thailand, a member of Fifa’s executive committee when it voted to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, greets supporters in 2011. Photograph: Damir Šagolj/Reuters
Rafael Salguero was a member of the Fifa exco. Qatar’s football dreams programme came to his home nation Guatemala. He voted on the Qatar World Cup bid. He pleaded guilty in October 2016 to criminal conspiracy to commit bank fraud and launder money.
Amos Adamu was a member of the Fifa exco. Qatar’s Football Dream project came to his home nation Nigeria. Adamu did not even get to the start line in Zurich. He was suspended from the vote after apparently agreeing to take a bribe in a newspaper sting.
Issa Hayatou was a member of the Fifa exco. Qatar’s Football Dreams project came to his home nation Cameroon. He voted on the Qatar World Cup bid. Hayatou has been accused of, and firmly denied, allegations of corruption relating to the activities of Mohammed bin Hammam at Fifa.
Most startling of all, Fifa exco member Nicolás Leoz of Paraguay, who was instrumental in shepherding the South American bloc to vote for Qatar, has since been accused of taking bribes and assorted other nefarious practices, blame-loaded into the grave by his former colleagues. A Qatar Football Dreams project opened in Leoz’s home country shortly before the vote.
At the end of which we have a £100m programme that made little practical sense installing itself in a series of locations where football administration is governed by people who are with hindsight tainted by corruption; all of whom have a say on the success of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup vote.
There is no evidence that any of this is connected, or any undisputed evidence of unsound influence around votes cast for Qatar’s bid. But Garcia was already concerned about Aspire. The report states: “There is evidence that Qatar 2022 employed an entity that at least contemplated diverting Aspire resources to countries associated with Executive Committee members or otherwise using Aspire resources to influence those members.”
As Garcia notes, Football Dreams was run in its early stages by Sandro Rosell, who would later wire £2m to an account held by the 10-year‑old daughter of Ricardo Teixeira, a discredited Fifa exco member; payment that was, the relevant parties have insisted, “unrelated to Qatar’s World Cup bid”.
Garcia circles around a meeting in January 2010 at Itanhangá Golf club in Rio attended by the emir of Qatar plus Julio Grondona, Leoz, Teixeira and João Havelange, plus Aspire officials. The meeting was described by Qatar as “an opportunity for the charismatic and progressive Emir to meet the leaders of South American football”. Garcia accepts, as Qatar contends in its defence, that “the Emir is not bound by Fifa’s rules”. Which sounds, on the evidence of this World Cup, about right.
Members of the Aspire Academy carry in the goal posts after training. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA
The Guardian tried to talk to Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy about Aspire, about these issues, about the successes and future direction of the programme, but nobody was able to reply to requests. Qatar has already had its say in response to Garcia. “In the upside down world where the Qatar Bid committee finds itself, the Aspire programme is now described by some media as using its influence in countries with Executive Committee members in order to improperly influence the outcome of the bid. This allegation is disproven by a neutral version of its history.”
What to make of all this now, as Qatar 2022 gallops on through its winter fever dream? As ever with Qatar it is useful to apply the filter of furiously literal-minded Qatari realpolitik. How do you get your hands on a World Cup? You give the world what it wants. OK. Let’s do that times a million, do it better than anyone else, do it better and more lavishly than, say, Australia, who also made entreaties towards Africa, or England, who seemed to think handbags would do the job. Lads, this is how you do it.
Qatar is like your no-filter friend who sees this stuff, the transactionalism, the commodification of human lives, the sharp edges of global capitalism, and strides straight through to its endpoint, without the elements in other cultures that soften or obscure this process. Want a World Cup? Here is a literal desert astro-turfing project, because this is how it works.
The Aspire dome sits at the centre of this thing, crouched behind its opaque reflective walls. The fields of its public zone are also empty. A massive frozen football screen displays a heap of broken images to no one. Wandering about this place there is a sense of the loneliness of the enterprise, the sheer force of will required to create this imagined world. Aspire will re-gear itself, will set its sights on securing the much-coveted Olympic Games. For now the deep green pitch beneath the mirrored dome is empty, the lights blazing down, a lone guard patrolling the centre, a place, still, of Football Dreams.
Antoine Griezmann has reiterated his support for the LGBTQ+ community in the buildup to France’s last-16 World Cup tie with Poland and suggested he feels conflicted playing in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal.
Griezmann has been vocal in his support for LGBTQ+ people and said he was “proud” when the A-League player Josh Cavallo became the first active openly gay male footballer in the world last year. In May, the Blackpool teenager Jake Daniels became the first male footballer in the UK to come out as gay since 1990.
In 2019 the Atlético Madrid forward was the cover star of Têtu, a gay magazine, telling the French publication: “Homophobia isn’t an idea, it’s a crime.” At the time he added: “If a gay footballer wants to come out, he may not have all the players on his side, but he will have me! It is up to us, parents, to educate our children so that they grow up in a less homophobic and less sexist world.”
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Griezmann previously said he sympathised with players who “do not come out of the closet because they are afraid”. On Friday Griezmann was asked whether he was embarrassed playing in Qatar after being outspoken on LGBTQ+ rights. “Embarrassed? Yes and no,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter where I am, that community will always have my support. I’m a footballer, that’s my job. I’m paid for playing football and I do it with pride. All my respect is there for [the LGBTQ+ community].”
Griezmann had earlier joked that Kylian Mbappé was “irreproachable” after his glittering start to the tournament and insisted the 23-year-old has immersed himself into the France squad since they were crowned world champions in Russia four years ago. Mbappé is a contender for the Golden Boot after scoring three of France’s six goals before they face Poland on Sunday hoping to advance to the quarter-finals and avoid a repeat of their last-16 exit at Euro 2020.
“Kylian is not the same player or the same personality right now,” Griezmann said when asked about the differences between Mbappe at this World Cup and the last. “On top of that we see him a lot more in the group, in the training he’s a lot more present, he talks a lot, he is very important for us. Every gesture that he does on or off pitch is going to be closely watched by the journalists, by the fans, and by his teammates too. He is irreproachable,” he added, smiling.
Griezmann said France need to guard against complacency after coming unstuck against Switzerland on penalties last year. “I think maybe we were a bit too relaxed against Switzerland,” he said. “We were leading 3-1 and we thought we had won. But in big competitions like that it is difficult, there is no easy opponent. Against Poland it is going to be the same. It is going to be complicated. We have to prepare well and nothing is guaranteed. I think we’re on the right path now.”
Well. About last night … to describe the conclusion of the group stages of this World Cup as crazy feels a bit like calling the residents of Arkham Asylum merely eccentric. For three minutes on Thursday, Costa Rica’s lead over Germany would have meant Spain were heading home, with the coach Luis Enrique mercifully in the dark about this potential outcome. “If I’d have known,” he reflected mildly afterwards, “I would have had a heart attack.” It was certainly the evening for it.
ITV’s Graeme Souness appeared to be suffering from a number of baroque medical conditions as he “analysed” the notion that the ball did not go out of play before Japan’s crucial second goal against Germany. Graeme’s conniption swiftly tipped over into such deep conspiracy theory that he is expected to follow his stint in Qatar with a secondment to Donald Trump’s stop-the-steal campaign. “Why have we not seen the evidence?” the studio’s Oliver Stone kept demanding rhetorically.
Should Souness find the siren call of US wingnuttery impossible to resist before the end of this tournament, he could perhaps be more competently replaced by any one of the rush of viewers who created their own at-home videos showing a ball which from one angle looked like it was wholly in their kitchen, but from another angle was actually revealed to still have an edge crossing over on to their living room carpet. Witchcraft. Sheer witchcraft.
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Then again, it has all been highly watchable. Only Fifa could survey the WTF-fuelled mayhem of this World Cup’s group stages and be entertaining talks to abandon the four-team format. Sporticidal maniac Gianni Infantino has been spearheading these discussions since 2016, when he rubber-stamped the 48-team World Cup as part of his organisation’s absolute commitment to the principle of quantity not quality. As things stand, plans have been under way to move instead to groups of three teams, with possible penalty shootouts to stop countries playing for results that favour them both. If you can’t have quite the level of financial corruption you enjoyed for decades, then I guess you scratch the itch by corrupting the product instead. That said, more teams mean more money, so in Fifa terms you get a twofer. There are now hints that this sensationally appalling idea might be up for reconsideration, with backroom discussions in Qatar apparently increasingly open to the notion of four-team groups again, meaning the 2026 World Cup would clock in at just the 104 games.
Honestly, who’d be Gareth Southgate? Photograph: Adam Davy/PA
Anyway, all that is for another day, because England play Senegal in the round of 16 on Sunday, and the buildup finds The Country That Gave Football To The World TM managing its expectations like it manages its economy. Honestly, who’d be Gareth Southgate? The sheer intensity of the ire directed at England’s most successful manager since Alf Ramsey has for some time suggested that its most aggressive proponents are angry about a vast constellation of other things for which Southgate and his team serve as a convenient proxy.
It’s notable that England’s national football side is almost the last area of the public realm of which some people still have the highest expectations. Trust in every other institution has drained away over the past decade and beyond, with pretty much the last thing “England expects” being for England to win the World Cup. Arguably the most striking thing about the often-grotesque failures of state during the pandemic was the relative indifference to them. The country deserved better – of course it did – but what initially saved the Johnson administration was that the country clearly did not expect better. That distinctly declinist state of affairs meant that it was ultimately Boris Johnson’s lying which did for him, and much later than a number of much deadlier charges might have done in a state with the luxury of higher standards.
Johnson’s mayfly successor Liz Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, famously unveiled a budget that led the former US treasury chief Larry Summers to observe: “The UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market.” Which is, at least, partway to it being just like watching Brazil. Although England (the country, not the football side) is unfortunately not even demonstrating any of the emerging market characteristics of high growth, high productivity, an expanding middle-class … maybe we’ve just got the fantastically-high-expectations-in-football bit. Hey – it’s a start.
In fact, for the preceding two major tournaments, it has been possible to observe tartly that England are one of those countries who can be described as “playing on despite the political turmoil back home”. This World Cup doesn’t look likely to have broken that run so far – although now they are entering the business end of their draw it does feel as if it would take an awful lot of luck for Southgate’s side to appease the section of the fanbase which believes a World Cup win is the very least they could do, actually. A number of our madder notions of exceptionalism are in the process of being quietly abandoned after several years of wanton political and economic self-harm – perhaps football will end up the last remaining bastion of the tendency.
If it does all go tits-up for England on Sunday or beyond, maybe a quick stint on I’m A Celebrity could rehabilitate Southgate in the public imagination for his hideous crime of possibly making substitutions too slowly. After all, a mere three weeks on the show took the infinitely greater transgressor Matt Hancock all the way to the threshold of the jungle throne in the public vote. It’s a funny old country, isn’t it? It would take more than a few homemade fan videos to penetrate its enduring mysteries. And I think, on balance, that I’d prefer a full-blown Souness conspiracy theory to explain them than the rather less palatable reality.
Marina Hyde’s World Cup Week will appear each Friday during the tournament
The Qatari official responsible for delivery of the 2022 World Cup has said the number of migrant workers who have died on World Cup-related projects is “between 400 and 500”.
Hassan al-Thawadi, the secretary general of the Supreme Committee for delivery and legacy, made the admission in an interview but said a precise figure for the number of fatalities was still “being discussed”.
“The estimate is around 400,” Thawadi told the TV show Piers Morgan Uncensored. “Between 400 and 500. I don’t have the precise number, that is something that is being discussed.
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“One death is too many, it’s as simple as that. [But] every year the health and safety standards on the sites are improving, at least on our sites, the World Cup sites, the ones we are responsible for. Most definitely to the extent that you have trade unions [commending] the work that has been done on World Cup sites and the improvement.”
After the interview there was anger at Thawadi’s comments with Nicholas McGeehan of the advocacy group Fair Square saying: “This is just the latest example of Qatar’s inexcusable lack of transparency on the issues of workers’ deaths. We need proper data and thorough investigations, not vague figures announced through media interviews. Fifa and Qatar still have a lot of questions to answer, not least where, when, and how did these men die and did their families receive compensation.”
The Supreme Committee has always maintained there have been only three work-related fatalities and 37 non-work-related deaths among migrant workers at World Cup stadiums since construction for the tournament began in 2014.
In 2021 the Guardian published research that showed that more than 6,500 migrant workers from five countries – India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – had died in Qatar between the start of 2011, the year after country won the right to host the World Cup, and 2020.
While the Guardian’s figures showed the total number of deaths from all causes and in all locations, activists have always argued that the World Cup caused an increase in the number of migrant workers travelling to the country. At the time McGeehan said: “A very significant proportion of the migrant workers who have died since 2011 were only in the country because Qatar won the right to host the World Cup.”
The Qatari government did not dispute the Guardian’s figures, but said that “the mortality rate among these communities is within the expected range for the size and demographics of the population”. The official figure of three stadium work-related World Cup deaths was repeated by Fifa and used in a speech by its president, Gianni Infantino, in an address to the European Council earlier this year.
Today I feel … largely invisible. Today I feel like a boggle-eyed despot-groupie. Today I feel like essence of human avarice distilled through a series of filters, poured into a dark suit and presented on stage looking like a discredited small-town mayor with a secret.
Today I feel like I really should, for the sake of world football, start to get a grip on this chaotic Fifa World Cup.
It is hard to know whether Gianni Infantino feels any of these things right now. It is nine days since Infantino delivered his opening press conference speech, his Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock moment, his I Have a Really Horrendous And Deluded Dream.
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For all its hallucinogenic qualities, that speech suggested Fifa’s president intended to run this World Cup under strict standing orders. However, in the days since, the most notable aspect of Fifa’s presence at its own super-show is its diffidence.
Infantino has gone into stealth mode. Fifa itself has seemed marginalised. An organisation defined by control-freakery, its tendency to assume quasi-governmental powers while hovering over its host like an alien tripod, has gone quiet.
Even worse, this has happened just as fires have begun to break out across this thing. A cast ranging from an angry Carlos Queiroz, to the massed brain-shouts of social media, to Infantino himself, has continued to debate the rise of the global south and the decadence of Europe, as expressed via World Cup group standings.
Mohammed bin Salman continues to circle the feast. Antony Blinken has used Wales versus the USA as a platform to present to the world Uncle Sam shaking hands with its keenest current Middle Eastern ally.
And right now Qatar 2022 feels less like the usual soft-power stage, more like a kind of real-time super-Davos, Yalta with a K-pop soundtrack. Is this really the moment for a closed-circle monarchy to start driving the world’s greatest sporting spectacle?
There have been no more public Fifa briefings in Doha. This is not unusual as tournaments go. But it is unfortunate given the many issues arising. Reporters and football administrators have spoken of being passed back and forth between host nation and governing body, questions left unanswered. Fifa’s handling of the informal/nonexistent semi-ban of rainbow items has involved vague, delayed statements. There is a sense of waiting always for the nod from the Supreme Delivery Committee.
Gianni Infantino with Yasser Al-Mishal (left), president of the Saudi football federation, and Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki, Saudi Arabia’s sport minister. Photograph: Reuters
Nobody puts Gianni in the corner. Except, it would seem, Hassan Abdullah al-Thawadi, chief executive of Qatar 2022, who some say is having a significant final pass on key details that affect supporters, federations, world football generally.
The past few days have seen confusion over the right to express even the most broadly sketched political views, most notably the spectacle of stadium guards taking away Iranian protest flags. Fifa’s statutes contain a commitment to “respecting all recognized human rights” and “striving to promote the protection of these rights”. This is in effect part of Infantino’s job description.
And yet it seems T-shirts with words as inoffensively universal as “Women” and “Freedom” are now banned in Fifa-land. Meanwhile Iran and Qatar share the world’s largest gas field. You really think you’re in control?
The end result is a dangerous and rancorous mess. Fifa and Qatar always looked the perfect fit, the perfect master and client-state. In the event Qatar appears to have overwhelmed its enablers, seized the starship controls and confined the captain to his quarters. At times one half expects to find Qatari government officials out there sternly pronouncing on refereeing appointments, player of the match gongs and the fact Gareth Southgate MUST now pick Phil Foden or squander a golden legacy.
This matters, because it is getting hot out here. The soundtrack of Qatar 2022 is a glaze of hope, love, We-Are-The-Dreamers stuff, undercut by a babbling undertone of anger and macro-grudges.
This runs right from Queiroz and Jürgen Klinsmann going toe-to-toe over cultural slights, to Serbia’s dressing-room flag reclaiming Kosovo, to John Herdman’s statement (Why John, why?) that Canada would “fuck” Croatia, to government ministers on all sides wading into the cultural frictions.
Fifa has bowed to Qatar’s will on the armband-of-love, even as Qatari officials wear their Palestinian rights symbols in the seats. LGBTQ+ bodies have called on Infantino to speak out, to feel as gay as he did nine days ago when he stood before the world as Football Jesus and promised love, harmony and a level of basic governance.
Instead Fifa’s most recent public guidance on all this is to announce that Germany are under investigation for not putting a player up at their press conference; and that the media need to use cabled internet connections as the press box wifi is in crisis. Thanks for that.
Meanwhile Infantino sits on top of this bonfire of greed, vanity and despotic power like a boggle-eyed Guy Fawkes mannequin, occasionally paraded about the place in his wheelbarrow or allowed to stand in the VVIP box and crunch his toffee apple for the cameras.
This leadership vacuum matters beyond simply the chaos on the ground. Fifa’s unchallenged primacy, its endless growth, is not a given. There has already been talk of some European nations getting itchy feet. Plans have been mooted now and then for a European and South American breakaway. Money, and the ongoing primacy of money, suggest the World Cup is too valuable to nobble itself in this way. But bridge-building and concessions are part of its success. Nothing lasts forever.
Infantino was supposed to be a technocrat when he took the top job, a safe-ish pair of hands after the debauchery of the Blatter years. He has turned out to be something much harder to gauge. Who is this person anyway? A despot’s glove puppet? An oleaginous pinocchio? A highly competent dissembler, smart enough to give a speech the western media see as deluded, but which was also perfectly pitched towards the Fifa members who will keep him in power?
With Blatter there was evidence of simple human vanity, the dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize and so on. The question of what Infantino wants is less clear. One remarkable aspect of Qatar’s control of this World Cup is that Infantino has not blinked, has not wavered in his total support. Either he simply loves power, or those powers have a degree of leverage over him that is not immediately clear.
More likely this game is being played at a level beyond such petty concerns as order on the ground. There may be fraught and divisive days in store before the final whistle. But Fifa is still expected to rake in a record $7.5bn (£6.3bn) from this messiest and most divisive of World Cups.
Saudi Arabia 2030 seems to be hardening as a possibility every day. Ignore the white noise. Just keep your eyes on the balance sheet. You get the leaders you deserve, or in football’s case the leaders your leader most wants to stand next to. Either way the global game has never looked quite so managed and muzzled and at the same time so out of control.
The saga of the OneLove armbands that were going to be worn by a number of team captains has been annoying and frustrating from start to limp finish. In many ways, the clamp down by Fifa on the wearing of them is ironic, too, because everyone within the federations who put together this show of support has worked hard to build a new OneLove brand almost to detach from the rainbow, to dilute and depoliticise an issue that is unavoidably political.
The whole episode was disappointing because even the most watered-down attempt to show that football should be an inclusive and welcoming space was too much. For Fifa to threaten players and the federations for trying to promote a symbolic message of unity, togetherness, tolerance and inclusion goes against all the values and principles that it says it stands for and wants to promote as the global governing body of the game.
There have been plenty who have argued that players, fans and federations should “stick to football” and that “we should respect the culture” of the host nation, but this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues. If we accepted segregation as part of the culture of a place or time then we would still be living with anti-interracial marriage laws and who knows what else.
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Arguing this is the liberal west trying to impose its values and principles on a country and a competition that don’t want it also hugely negates the lived experiences of any LGBTQ+ players competing in the tournament, as well as the LGBTQ+ fans in the stands. Perhaps most criminally, it also lets down representatives of the LGBTQ+ communities within Qatar, who need global support and the platform of the World Cup to have a voice about what’s going on for them and the freedoms they’re fighting for.
The accusation that it is racist to discuss these issues because it shows a lack of respect for Qatari or Islamic culture is wrong, but there has been a tinge of racism regarding discussions. In many forums the narrative becomes that this is the uncultured Middle East v the progressive west, but that undermines the issues and leads to whataboutery. We should not be coming across as holier than thou but acknowledging that problems can exist all over the world, in all societies, at the same time.
In Britain we have a lot of issues. I would argue that rising homelessness and people not being able to afford energy is also a human rights abuse, that people should not have to be suffering in the way they are because of the negligence of the government.
All of these things can exist at the same time. I can be critical of our government, our country and the way things are operating here as well as being critical of other countries. Human rights abuses and discrimination should not even be up for debate. It should be a given that you take an ethical and moral position on these issues, but at the first sign of a pushback from Fifa the federations folded.
The former England international Alex Scott wears the OneLove armband in Qatar. Photograph: BBC
There are huge pressures on players. Many don’t just support themselves financially but their extended families, too. And there is a real feeling of powerlessness. There is a feeling that whatever they do, nothing will change. That is why federations need to take a stand, as governing bodies but also in supporting their players’ voices.
If everyone gave up at the first hurdle in the fight for freedoms and equality, then where would be today? Look at John Carlos, Tommie Smith and Peter Norman, who stood on the 200m podium at the 1968 Olympics and risked everything – Smith and Carlos raised their fists in support of the Black Power movement, with all three donning badges in support for the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
It’s a sacrifice, and sometimes it is a personal sacrifice, but the long‑term effect and the impact that acts of solidarity or protest can have are far reaching. We should be taking pride in the position we want to stand on and should be reflecting on how we want to be seen in the next 100 years.
The decision to set the armbands aside in the face of sporting sanctions is incredibly weak and stands in stark contrast to the actions of the players of Iran. They have risked being disowned by their own nation, their own government and put themselves, their families and their friends in potential danger by not singing the national anthem before the game against England in support of the protests back home. They understand, though, that the World Cup is a platform and an opportunity to bring global attention to a very important and critical issue within their own country. That shows courage and strength and it should empower others.
If a women’s team had been put in the position of the teams involved and been threatened with sporting sanctions, I feel like the response would have been different. Why? Because as women we’ve been used to having to sacrifice and make difficult choices just to be able to play football, even when we know there’s a consequence. Indeed, the two people to wear the armband despite Fifa’s condemnation have been women – the former England international Alex Scott and Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser.
The Germany players covering their mouths in protest against the threat of sanctions and a number of federations and players speaking out strongly against the pressure to not wear the armband should be applauded, but it’s not enough. Every day, migrant workers, women and LGBTQ+ people put their lives on the line just by existing in Qatar. Not being able to stomach sporting sanctions in that context is incredibly weak.
Speak to fans in Doha and nobody has a bad word to say. When you announce you’re a journalist there’s a narrowing of the eyes, an uncertainty about what you might ask, but when it’s clear it’s the experience and not the host country you want to talk about there’s a list of positives: transport is great, the city is safe and the experience at the matches has been wonderful.
Most supporters are here for a short while and perhaps on a tour. Two England fans, father and son, had taken in the Formula One in Abu Dhabi on the way over. One American family, browsing the rails at a knock-off sports shop, were taking in 10 games in Thanksgiving week then heading home. What were they doing in between matches? “It’s quite nocturnal, so you sleep. And then you go to the mall. I mean, it’s the Gulf – what else is there to do?”
There have been some miserable exceptions to this rule with reports of sewage flooding shipping container apartments in fan villages, or brown water coming from taps. Some fans have been offered a refund on accommodation that had not been finished in time. Meanwhile Wales fans have had to engage their Football Association to complain to Fifa after their hats were confiscated by security because they displayed the rainbow symbol.
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Qatar: beyond the football
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This is a World Cup like no other. For the last 12 years the Guardian has been reporting on the issues surrounding Qatar 2022, from corruption and human rights abuses to the treatment of migrant workers and discriminatory laws. The best of our journalism is gathered on our dedicated Qatar: Beyond the Football home page for those who want to go deeper into the issues beyond the pitch.
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Still, it is difficult to find discord on the streets of Qatar – that may be because those who are disgruntled have stayed at home. A lot of people have looked at the price, looked at the restrictions – with all accommodation and transportation funnelled through the organisers and entry to the country dependent on possession of a match ticket – and decided to give this World Cup a miss. Official estimations of 1.2 million foreign visitors this month seem way off.
That’s not to say you can’t tell a tournament is on. Doha has been done up to the nines, plastered in bunting, slogans and endless advertising, some of it stripped hundreds of metres along the height of skyscrapers in the gleaming West Bay district. At night and weekends the locals – largely but not exclusively the South Asian community – take to the streets in replica shirts (Argentina, then Brazil, then Qatar in that order) and bang drums on the Corniche and the “boulevard” of the new neighbourhood-cum-city of Lusail.
Fans on the streets of Doha. Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
There are, also, decent contingents from regional neighbours – Saudi Arabia most obviously, but also Morocco and Tunisia. Argentinians and Mexicans have travelled too, the Latin American presence at a tournament thousands of miles and dollars away perhaps boosted by expat communities from the USA. In terms of substantial followings, that may be about the full extent, with other countries maxing out at the 2,000 to 3,000 ultras visible in the stadiums.
The matches are the best place to see people. There hasn’t been a fixture without empty seats, with Qatar’s match against Senegal on Friday the most egregious example yet. But most games have had an atmosphere worthy of a World Cup, largely thanks to the ultras and their resident drummers, but perhaps also down to the acoustics of stadiums built at such great cost.
To be in the ground is to feel part of something, but that sensation quickly dissipates on departure and to recapture it is a challenge almost impossible to master. The organisers have their answer: the Fifa fan festival, a 40,000-capacity space in full view of the West Bay skyscrapers. It has free entry for those with appropriate ID (the Hayya card, a digital application so insecure that German authorities have advised wiping your phone after using it). It stays open till 2am and by 10pm the crowd can be substantial, but they remain quiet. That is perhaps a reflection of the atomised groups of supporters in attendance, padded out by locals who – not infrequently – are taking advantage of the opportunity to drink alcohol legally and in public.
The fan festival has no seating and no shade (if fans do complain about one thing it’s that awnings and umbrellas or even trees to cut out the glare from the still fiery winter sun are in short supply). The attractions on offer within are largely showcases for the products of sponsors. The fan festival is as much trade fair as fun park and beyond it there are not many places to go.
To come to Doha is to experience a city without a sense of the public realm. It’s the absence not only of bars to gather in but of parks and squares too. The best “limbs” videos of exuberant support have come from small, dark bars in international hotels. The American family are not wrong when they say that the mall – of which there are many – is the best place to congregate. But traipsing around the shops does not facilitate the sort of spontaneous meeting and exchange with people from different cultures that usually characterises an international sporting event.
The opening week of this tournament has been characterised by tension over who controls the World Cup. Changing rules over the sale of beer suggested Qatari organisers had the whip hand over Fifa. Threats of sporting sanctions over OneLove armbands showed Fifa flexing its muscles over European associations. Where the fans and the countries they represent sit among all this is a moot point. The strange thing, and this is a strange World Cup no doubt, is that very few people here seem to be bothered.
England, Wales and five other European nations feared their captains would be exposed to “unlimited liability” and would have faced suspensions if they had defied Fifa’s banning of the pro-diversity OneLove armband during the World Cup.
Despite facing criticism for backing down after coming under pressure from Fifa, the English Football Association’s options were limited by concerns that the sporting sanctions for Harry Kane could have been worse than an instant booking if the captain had worn the armband against Iran. There were also fears that Gareth Southgate’s side could have been prevented from entering the field.
The FA’s worries were shared by the other six countries involved in the OneLove campaign after talks with world football’s governing body, with those close to the process left with the impression that “Fifa could do anything” to any captain who wore the armband in Qatar.
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Qatar: beyond the football
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This is a World Cup like no other. For the last 12 years the Guardian has been reporting on the issues surrounding Qatar 2022, from corruption and human rights abuses to the treatment of migrant workers and discriminatory laws. The best of our journalism is gathered on our dedicated Qatar: Beyond the Football home page for those who want to go deeper into the issues beyond the pitch.
Guardian reporting goes far beyond what happens on the pitch. Support our investigative journalism today.
The German federation has described Fifa’s behaviour as “extreme blackmail” and sources have indicated there was no clarity over whether the captains would merely receive a caution.
England, Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark feared their captains could be banned. It was unclear whether any suspension would be limited to one match. None of the countries were prepared to put their players in that position. A source said that the captains would have risked “unlimited liability” if they had defied Fifa’s warnings.
Separately the FA was concerned that England’s game against Iran would not have started if Kane had tried to leave the dressing room with the armband. The FA is exploring if it will be legally possible to challenge the threat of sporting sanctions, and there has been fury within the seven associations about Fifa’s behaviour.
Suggestions that Kane could have created an iconic moment by walking on to the pitch with the armband and receiving an instant booking are misplaced. The yellow card would have been shown in the dressing room, stripping away any potential symbolism.
Southgate, speaking before Friday’s game against the USA, was asked about the threat of sanctions for Kane. “I don’t know all the ins and outs because I wasn’t in the meeting but there was definitely a feel there were sanctions and not all of those were really clear, I think, so the decision was taken out of the hands of Harry,” England’s head coach said.
“The decision from the organisation was: ‘We’re not even putting the armband in the dressing room.’ There is no discussion. The player had no say.”
Germany’s players were praised for covering their mouths with their hands to suggest they had been gagged by Fifa before their game against Japan on Wednesday. Six players, including the captain, Manuel Neuer, also wore Adidas boots with rainbow stitching during the team’s shock 2-1 defeat against Japan, and the squad sported tops with rainbow colours on their sleeves in the warm-up.
Germany have faced no punishment from Fifa but Southgate questioned whether there would be any value in England mounting a similar form of protest on Friday.
“I’m quite comfortable with our position and I think we should be confident in what we stand for,” Southgate said. “There was a plan – we weren’t able to carry out that plan. What do we do now? Do we all try to outdo each other on a gesture that, however we do it, probably won’t be enough.
“We want to support the LGBTQ community in particular and recognise that a lot of those people aren’t here with us, and we wanted them here with us. But we could also rush into doing things that don’t really make any difference.
German players cover their mouths in protest before their game against Japan. Photograph: Javier García/Shutterstock
“I understand that is going to be uncomfortable for people because I could be criticised, the captain has been criticised, the organisation will be criticised. I’m very comfortable with what I stand for, and how I deal with people every day of my life is more important than a statement that might land well and might not.”
Kane trained on Thursday and will start on Friday after an injury scare. Southgate indicated that England, who would seal progress from Group B by beating the USA, will name an unchanged side against Gregg Berhalter’s team. James Maddison is still recovering from a knee injury.
Harry Maguire, who has recovered from the dehydration that forced him off against Iran, has opened up on the criticism he has faced and compared it to the negativity aimed at his former Manchester United teammate Cristiano Ronaldo. “He’s one of the greatest players ever and gets criticised day in, day out,” he said. “So if it’s going to happen to him I think it’s part and parcel of the game.”
Southgate revealed that Prince William had told England’s players to block out distractions on social media. “We couldn’t have paid him for better advice,” Southgate said.
