By Monica Showalter
For those who dislike the World Cup, here’s a new reason to dislike the organization behind it even more:
FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s near hour-long speech on the eve of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been described as “crass” and an “insult” to migrant workers by human rights groups.
In an explosive monologue at the start of a news conference in Doha, Infantino – the boss of world soccer’s governing body – accused Western critics of Qatar’s human rights record of hypocrisy.
“What we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons,” he said. “Reform and change takes time. It took hundreds of years in our countries in Europe. It takes time everywhere, the only way to get results is by engaging … not by shouting.”
The tournament, which starts on Sunday, is the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East, but it has been mired in controversy, with much of the build-up focusing on human rights, from the death of migrant workers and the conditions many have endured in Qatar, to LGBTQ and women’s rights.
That’s from CNN, which has billed the remarks as ‘insensitive’ to human rights organizations, which document the slave-labor conditions of much of Qatar’s expatriate work force, the people who sweep floors and clean toilets, from countries such as India, Pakistan and the Philippines.
No argument with that.
But what’s missed here in these “crass” remarks, (a good word for them), is the FIFA chief’s incredible willingness to dismiss 3,000 years of Western civilization as something to be apologized for, all to please his big-dollar Qatari hosts.
The whole Qatar situation is a very strange one, reeking of corruption, with some corruption accusations leveled against Qatar in the mere selection of the country for the once-every-four-years soccer championship, even though the country has no significant soccer presence globally, the inhospitality of the country in terms of its harsh desert climate, which isn’t the best for soccer-playing, and the cultural issues, such as the Muslim intolerance of alcohol — which has been forbidden in their soccer stadium, which rather goes against global soccer tradition.
Somehow, they have a lot of money, and somehow, they got the contract for the games. Now they’ve got the FIFA chief denigrating and downgrading the West in a bid to create equivalencies which just aren’t there.
What a game. Gonna be hard to follow that one, given the wokesterim that has infiltrated even that international league.