Good morning. If you are a football fan with a conscience, get ready for a month of constant cognitive dissonance: the Qatar World Cup is here.
It started yesterday with an opening ceremony featuring Morgan Freeman and Jungkook from K-pop superstars BTS, and a 2-0 defeat for Qatar against Ecuador. Meanwhile this weekend, Fifa president Gianni Infantino, paid about £2.6m this year, said, among other preposterous things, that he feels “like a migrant worker”. And Pete Pattisson reported for the Guardian that some actual migrant workers employed as security guards during the tournament appear to be being paid as little as 35 pence an hour.
Guardian sportswriters covering the tournament are feeling this weirdness more acutely than most: they’re in Qatar, writing match reports, assessing full-backs and substitutions, while at the same time trying to reflect the concerns over allegations of human rights abuses, corruption, and modern slavery.
In today’s newsletter, we hear from three of them – Jonathan Liew, Paul MacInnes, and Barney Ronay – about how the tournament looks up close, and what it tells us about football’s troubling power. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Cop27 | The world still stands “on the brink of climate catastrophe” after the deal reached at the Cop27 UN climate summit on Sunday, and the biggest economies must make fresh commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, climate experts and campaigners have warned. Read Fiona Harvey’s account of a negotiation session that continued for 40 hours after its Friday deadline.
Brexit | The government has sought to quell a backlash among hardline Brexiters after it was claimed the UK wanted to pursue closer ties with the European Union by adopting a Swiss-style relationship. Health secretary Steve Barclay said: “I don’t recognise this story at all.”
Rail transport | Rail cancellations have reached their highest level on record with more than 314,000 trains fully or partly cancelled across Great Britain in a year, a Guardian analysis has revealed.
Conservatives | A Conservative councillor photographed wearing a blackshirt and surrounded by fascist imagery at far-right events has been suspended from the party. Andy Weatherhead, said by anti-racist organisation Hope Not Hate to have been a senior member of the openly fascist New British Union, said he attended two events in 2013 “in the spirit of education and curiosity”.
Qatar World Cup | The comedian Joe Lycett appears to have thrown £10,000 into an industrial shredder in protest at David Beckham’s continued support for the World Cup in Qatar. In a video posted online yesterday, Lycett – dressed in rainbow feathers – put what appeared to be bundles of cash into a shredder before cursteying to camera.
In depth: ‘You want a World Cup? This is what a World Cup is’
Barney Ronay I’m speaking to you from the McCafe at the Doha main media centre. It’s vast – it’s an enormous convention centre, one of those places where the corridors have travelators because it’s so massive. Everything is clean, hard surfaces and air conditioning.
Paul MacInnes We’re staying in a non-descript apartment block bedecked with international flags. It looks like every single member of the international press is here. One of them has apparently brought a Christmas tree to put in his room. I arrived to an email warning that the quality of the bedsheets was very poor, and we’d be reimbursed if we had to replace them, but they’re pretty much exactly the same as the ones I have at home, so make of that what you will …
***
The atmosphere: ‘It feels like a theme park’
Jonathan Liew The reversal on beer in stadiums made it quite clear that Fifa are on the verge of losing control of their own tournament. It’s quite funny, in a way: it couldn’t happen to a nicer organisation! But it’s pretty remarkable that they are only just now realising what it means to be giving their premier tournament to a state without much interest in due process or consistency. And Fifa are over a barrel. It’s not just about beer in stadiums. If security are going to be heavy-handed, say, there’s not much Fifa can realistically do.
PM It doesn’t quite feel like the World Cup is happening. When I got off the plane, I saw some fans from Cameroon who were ten minutes behind on the escalator, singing songs and banging tambourines, but it was 50, not 500, and they’re the only people I’ve seen. When I walked through the centre of town, the advertising was ubiquitous, and every single local appears to be wearing a football shirt or engaged in some way. But I haven’t seen large numbers of fans. I wrote a piece noting that this tournament is going to be a lot more corralled and centralised than previously – staying in official places, watching official entertainment.
Read Paul MacInnes on what fans visiting Qatar for the World Cup can expect
BR The fan village is not in the centre of the city. It’s a place to go and look at people, essentially – a concrete plaza with a very limited supply of Budweiser as a sop to the beer drinking masses. Most of the travelling England fans will be expats, or people with enough money to make a trip – I don’t think the “please don’t take me home” lads are going to make much of an impression.
PM You hear about people who are going to stay in Dubai and go back after the game. We will see a very middle and upper class tournament – a change in the demographic. But then everything about the game in England at the top level is about a global audience, and how it looks on TV is more important than the live experience.
These fan parks, which look like the opposite experience of previous World Cups – getting to know a place, being part of it for a while – are a deliberate strategy by Fifa. It wants to turn the tournament into a festival, where going to a match is just a part of it. A homogenised experience that’s the same wherever you stage it in the world.
BR It feels like a theme park. There’s always been this ridiculous corporate circus, but generally it intersects with a real sense of joy, and you monetise the joy. Here, there’s no joy, just monetising. You feel that this is a place that should in no world be staging this, until you realise: the World Cup is not a festival of football, it’s a travelling city state, a TV show sold to people who can pay the most money. You want a World Cup? This is what a World Cup is.
***
The history: ‘Fifa has always used spreading the game as cover for financial gain’
BR People love football in this part of the world, and it is the world game. How unusual is what’s happened here? Fifa, since its earliest days, has always used the idea of spreading the game as cover for financial gain. In 1978 it was in Argentina, hosted by a vicious fascist dictatorship that was machine-gunning people. Joao Havelange [then Fifa president] said it was about spreading the game. I don’t believe that for a second.
PM If you look back on previous World Cups, it’s surprising how many of them came with ethical concerns which weren’t as prominently in the spotlight as Qatar – even in Russia in 2018, the main concerns were hooliganism, but Putin was already involved in an illegal war and the longterm suppression of human rights and his political opponents. So I understand an element of the Qatari pushback which asks: why are we the ones? On the other hand, when questions have been raised, there haven’t been very good answers.
JL In Russia, they put their best face on to the world. Everyone was extremely nice and polite and welcoming in a way that felt extremely strategic. It didn’t feel like an oppressive place, but occasionally these things will slip through.
I remember working in a cafe in Moscow, tapping away on a piece, opposite military police headquarters, and these two guys in uniform a few tables away called me over and said ‘have a drink with us’, and spent a couple of hours asking extremely personal questions and filling my glass to the brim and teaching me a load of Russian toasts … I wasn’t quite sure what sort of situation it was. I filed the piece in an extremely groggy state. But it made me think about how power can be exerted without really exerting itself. That’s what it’s going to be like in Qatar.
***
The coverage: ‘There is always going to be this cognitive dissonance’
JL World Cups are always heavily channelled through official routes, and official lines of inquiry. But even though we’re there for the football there is a duty to report on the whole of the tournament and what it means for the country, what its impact is, and who’s suffering.
PM Getting responses from the authorities is difficult, and that goes for Fifa as well as Qatar. We already know about photographers being told to stop taking pictures, or asked to delete images, and restrictions on taking photos of government buildings.
BR You have to keep both plates spinning. Some people might say it’s stupid talking about football when we’re also talking about the deaths of workers, rights abuses – but you have to not give up on the game, because otherwise you’re saying, “yep – it does belong to you, the people who have decided it’s something to be sold and retailed. It’s all yours.” And I don’t think we should do that.
JL If you work out how to do both things, please let me know. You acknowledge the incredible injustices of this tournament, and there’s a slightly awkward pause, and then you ask, so who’s going to win? That’s always been the case, but it’s even more dissonant here.
Read Jonathan Liew on the ‘horrifying but irresistible prospect’ of Qatar 2022
I totally respect people who have concluded that they just can’t have anything to do with this tournament at all. My view is that it is part of football, and you cover it if you cover football. I don’t want these old guys dictating how I feel about it. The contract may belong to them, but the game still belongs to me.
***
The legacy: ‘It’s not about sportswashing. It’s about hard power’
PM I’m writing something at the moment about workers’ rights, and trying to focus on what the World Cup can deliver in terms of permanent change, and the answer looks like being: not much. A lot of people have been trying behind closed doors and now they are throwing their hands up and saying, “no, it’s not worked”. So that is going to be an indictment of hosting the tournament here.
BR “Sportswashing” is a term that was invented about seven years ago, and I’m not really sure it does the job. It’s about hard power. A friend of mine spoke to some senior Qatari people, and he asked, what do you want the tournament for? You have one of the world’s highest GDPs per capita. And the response was: we don’t want to be another Kuwait. It’s a tiny peninsula surrounded by Saudi Arabia, it’s vulnerable, there have been coups in the past – well, nobody is invading Qatar now. It’s a player on the stage.
JL Football went through a slightly idealistic phase about a decade ago, maybe, where it was very convinced of its ability to do good. I think now we are all reconciled to the fact that it is a tool in a world of unbridled power.
---
For all the latest on Qatar, from the scandal to the scores, sign up to Football Daily – our free, sometimes funny, newsletter.
What else we’ve been reading
Hannah Jane Parkinson’s piece for the Observer about the tennis gambling addiction that cost her £40,000 is unsparing, funny, sad, and beautifully written. And it’s another indictment, if one were needed, of the inadequate safeguards put in place by an industry worth billions. Archie
If there’s one tiny upside to holding a World Cup in a small nation where human rights abuses are common and homosexuality is illegal, it’s the light that can be shone on it. Jim Waterson’s piece on how the BBC ignored the opening ceremony in favour of highlighting those issues is a perfect example. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
Climate scientist Bill McGuire argues that despite the progress on loss and damage, Cop27 is proof that the summit has become “a bloated travelling circus that sets up once a year, and from which little but words ever emerge.” Archie
Tips about clingfilm on windows and moving sofas away from the wall have been all too common from Conservative MPs – Katherine Latham’s excellent guide to the science of staying warm provides a nice antidote. I should have guessed that a beer jacket will have the opposite effect than the name suggests. Toby
The opening line of Jessica Rawnsley’s piece about housesitting explains the benefits nicely: “Massive houses, expansive gardens, occasionally a fridge full of food – and all of it free.” What emerges is a fascinating picture of a boom driven in part by the cost of living crisis. Archie
Sport
World Cup 2022 | Two first-half goals from Enner Valencia were enough to consign Qatar to a 2-0 defeat against Ecuador, making them the first host nation ever to lose an opening game.
World Cup 2022 | Harry Kane may not wear the “OneLove” rainbow captain’s armband in England’s opening game today amid fears that Fifa could instruct referees that the gesture in support of LGBTQ+ rights merits an immediate booking.
Formula One | Max Verstappen finished the season in Abu Dhabi with his 15th win of the year. Lewis Hamilton retired three laps from the end of the race.
The front pages
The Guardian covers the final deal reached at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, with the headline “Climate deal still leaves ‘world on brink of catastrophe’, experts warn”.
The i says “Tory MPs warn Sunak over ‘Swiss’ deal with EU” over rumours that the government is pursuing a new agreement with the EU. The Mail follows the same story with “Don’t betray us on Brexit”, while the Express headlines “Fury at ‘absurd idea’ to go soft on Brexit”.
The Times splashes with “Patients to face long NHS wait for years”. The paper says that ministers accept there is little hope of hitting key health targets. The Telegraph leads with “Cancer toll surges in wake of pandemic”, after diagnoses were missed during Covid.
Finally, the Sun carries a full page image of England captain Harry Kane with the headline “Lions of Arabia”.
Today in Focus
Beyond 8 billion: why the world’s population matters
The rise in the population, driven primarily by the developing world, has prompted reflection across the globe. The Guardian’s south Asia correspondent, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, tells Nosheen Iqbal how in India, which is due to overtake China as the most populous country, a ‘youth bulge’ has presented the country with the opportunity for a ‘demographic dividend’.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett’s cartoons, the best Saturday magazine content and an exclusive look behind the scenes
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Before his death this month, Eric Allison had a typically powerful year as the Guardian’s prison correspondent, writing about the growing number of prisoners dying on remand while on care plans and revealing the devastating impact in a single case of suicide. Now his work has been honoured by the Criminal Justice Alliance, which named him as one of two winners of its outstanding journalism award alongside the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The CJA described Allison as a “dedicated activist and penal reformer” who it said had unearthed a series of injustices in the prison system and said that he “powerfully drew on his own experiences of the criminal justice system and life after release in his journalism”. Eric’s colleague and longtime collaborator, Simon Hattenstone, picked up the award on his behalf, and said he was “so proud (and pretty emotional) … Our Eric would have been unbelievably chuffed”.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
