Far from acting as a bridge between different cultures, the first football World Cup hosted by an Arab Muslim country has ended up mired in recrimination and ill-feeling, less a celebration of sport’s soft power and reach than a display of its limits.
Instead of burnishing Qatar’s image in the west in these globalised but polarised times, it looks to have tarnished it. Inside the small, fabulously wealthy peninsula state, which plays an extremely active role on the world stage, the drumbeat of criticism is no longer interpreted as perplexing and frustrating, but instead as something born of jealousy and racism.
