Qatar

I love football (American: soccer). Every four years, The World Cup comes around and the top national teams battle for glory. Host nations are chosen by FIFA - The Federation of International  Football Associations. In 2010, they chose Qatar for 2022. Football fans around the world were extremely   puzzled by the choice. Qatar is a tiny and very hot country without a footballing tradition. How could such a country merit the opportunity to host such a prestigious event ?

Anyway - it happened and since 2010 oil-rich Qatar has worked tirelessly to build eight stadiums - employing 30,000 foreign workers in the process. All this cost around US $8.5 billion.  Nobody knows exactly how many migrant construction workers have died in order to make sure Qatar is ready for The World Cup. Amnesty International say up to 15,000 have died but others say up to 7,000. It is a huge death toll just to stage a sporting event. There are still lots of questions about the amounts of compensation  Qatar has actually paid out.

The prize should never have gone to Qatar. Soon thousands of football fans from around the world will be flying in to support their teams. As the population of Qatar is less than three million, there will presumably be few home-based football supporters to fill the remaining seats.

The carbon footprint of the tournament will be as big as The Persian Gulf and there's another matter that should concern us.  Being a conservative Islamic state, Qatar will not be welcoming LGBTQ  supporters who will surely be wise to watch their step in such a hostile environment.

I plan to watch World Cup matches on TV as usual but with resentment. Even the ex-chairman of FIFA, the odious Sepp Blatter admitted this week that the tournament should never have been awarded to Qatar. It is a crying shame that he did not speak out much earlier when the Qatari government were courting him.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/p1Rt3Ao