AL KHOR, QATAR – Twelve years. Twelve years. That’s how long it took for the most controversial World Cup in the tournament’s nearly century-old history to foment and form, to fill coffers and inspire and divide and stumble forward. Twelve years of death for migrant workers and displacement of citizens; of brand-new stadiums rising like palatial mirages from flat, arid desert sand; of hand-wringing and hop-wrangling and vast cultural divides that only seem to grow wider by the day.
Then, finally, there it was, like a beer station resting atop a sand dune on the near horizon, taps full but prices steep. Soccer. The beautiful game. Often, a unifying force. The sport that’s supposed to be the whole point of this extravaganza but isn’t here, not yet.
The mood shifted that way on Sunday, shifted toward the soccer and the tournament. It excused nothing that happened in the lead-up. It didn’t align with FIFA’s stated theme, “the unique idea of encompassing an idea of bridging distances,” which reads like gibberish that even Morgan Freeman’s silky smooth baritone booming over Al Bayt Stadium couldn’t sell.
