The 2022 FIFA World Cup starts today in the highly controversial venue of Qatar, a country with zero experience of qualifying for the World Cup. I have written a blog anticipating the last three World Cups, usually trying to forecast what might happen. In 2010 I wrote “The winning team is likely to have won it before. In the last 7 competitions only France has emerged as a new winner and it had already won the European Nations Cup and was host nation. Perhaps Spain might emerge having also won the last European Nations Cup and maintained an almost unbroken streak over the period since then.“ Spain beat Holland in the final 1-0. In 2014 I wrote “Germany have reached at least the semi-finals of the last four major international tournaments without winning any. It’s about time that changed. Some of their stars in 2010 were relatively unknown then – now Mehmet Ozil and company are established stars. If anything they have too many attacking midfielders and have not found equally able forwards to complement Miroslav Klose, playing in his fourth World Cup and likely to become the competition’s all-time top goal scorer.“ Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in the final and Klose did become the top goal scorer of all time with his 16^th goal in finals. Thomas Müller emerged as that needed extra striker and he will be playing in his fourth World Cup Finals this time. However, I got 2018 wrong. I wrote “It’s not clear to me why France is so highly rated.” France beat Croatia 4-2 in the Final and Kylian Mbappé whom I had never heard of emerged as one of the outstanding players of the tournament, which he will probably be again.

But also, in those blogs I wrote of the appalling governance of the sport and in the 2014 blog I wrote extensively of the disgusting decision to award the 2022 finals to Qatar which had already been announced in 2010 at the same time as the equally appalling decision was made to award the 2018 Finals to Russia. That decision should have been reversed when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. It wasn’t. The dreadful chairman of FIFA today is Gianni Infantino. After the 2018 tournament he was presented with the Order of Friendship by Putin.

When FIFA made the decision to award the Finals to Qatar the then chairman of FIFA Sepp Blatter later admitted that the subject of Human Rights was never discussed. He also admitted that FIFA’s assessment of the Qatar’s bid was at the lowest level. It had no facilities; the climate was not suitable; it has almost no track record in football or hosting events of this kind etc. What Qatar has is the third largest gas field in the world and with its tiny population this makes it immensely rich. Evidence has been provided from many sources confirmed not only by media investigations but also investigations by major national police forces including the FBI that bribes of millions of dollars were made to the FIFA committee. Over half the members of that committee have been indicted or accused and several have been convicted.

But sadly, money talks not just at that level but at every level in the game. Zinedine Zidane, Pep Guardiola, Sir Alex Ferguson, David Beckham, Gary Neville, Gabriel Batistuta and many other leading football personalities have all given their backing. Leading clubs like Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain all take money from Qatar. Argentina, Brazil, England, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay have all played friendlies in Doha thus helping to build its credibility.

FIFA claims that the tournament will be carbon neutral. Independent authorities says that it will be one of the worst climate disasters of its kind in history, even though they have moved the tournament to winter thus causing massive disruption to the normal winter season in the Northern Hemisphere. The stadia, seven of which have been purpose built for the tournament, will be air-conditioned with immense levels of carbon emissions. No one knows what this means for the playing conditions but colossal volumes of water have been shipped in for the grass. Some of this is from desalinated sources which obviously have a massive carbon footprint. FIFA’s own estimates of travel by the fans absurdly assume that they all make a one-way journey. i.e. the fans from overseas are all emigrating permanently to Qatar while the local fans are all travelling on foot or by bicycle. In fact, many fans will be staying in neighbouring countries like the UAE and flying in for every match on 24-hour visas so if their teams stay in the competition to the knockout stages they will be flying in and out many times.
 

Infantino has come out publicly to accuse the West of hypocrisy in their condemnation of Qatar. He is not completely wrong in this. Many are rightly concerned about the problem of Human Rights in Qatar particularly relating to the LGBT community. But we all seem to have forgotten that when England hosted the World Cup in 1966 and won it, homosexuality was illegal in the UK at that time. I don’t recall anyone complaining about that. But we did not need to build any new stadia. And we did not need to rely on low paid foreign workers to build them, and if we did we would not have confiscated their passports when they flew in from South Asia. Qatar claims that it has reformed much of its appalling employment legislation. It may have changed the laws, but the evidence is that it is not enforcing them.
 

The outstanding sports journalist Jim White recently wrote an article in which he reported on a Sports Club at which he had been invited to speak. He asked the audience how many of them were looking forward to the World Cup. Noone raised their hand. I feel the same way. I love football but I don’t like how it is run. It is being ruined by poor and corrupt governance and by greedy owners. I feel sorry for the players because it will for them be the fulfilment of a dream, but the competition has been blighted permanently.
 

And who is going to win? I don’t know. The favourites are Argentina and Brazil. Argentina last won in 1986 and Brazil in 2002. Argentina won the last Copa America and have not lost in 36 matches, close to the world record set by Italy. But only three of those matches were against European opposition, a draw against Germany and wins against Italy and Estonia. They do have the great Lionel Messi playing in his fifth World Cup and it would be fitting if he could get his hands on the trophy, but they came up short against Germany in the 2014 Final and may well do again. Brazil have changed their  style having led the world in attacking fullbacks with Cafu and Roberto Carlos. They now have a batch of lively young wingers. However, I find it odd that Fred, who is a pedestrian midfield player who has blighted my beloved Manchester United the past few years, is first choice in their midfield. I think it will again be a European winner and that might be Portugal to round off Ronaldo’s career which has rivalled Messi for so long. I’ll probably just watch England’s games, but the first is tomorrow against Iran and we should not be playing them.