Peter Law: ‘Magic of football’ can’t erase World Cup’s human rights stain

Today, I do not feel like a migrant worker who has slaved in horrendous conditions to send what little money I earn back home to my family.

I also would never pretend to know what it is like to be discriminated against and bullied because of disability or sexuality or to have to overcome society’s prejudices.

What I do know is that FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino shamed football on the eve of what should have been its crowning moment — the World Cup.

His tirade against what he described as “hypocrisy” and “racism” from Western countries critical of Qatar’s human rights record looked a lot like a leader cracking under pressure.

He began his monologue by bizarrely claiming he understood discrimination because, as the son of Italian immigrants in Switzerland, he was bullied about the colour of his hair at school.

“What I’ve seen brings me back to my personal story. I am a son of migrant workers. My parents were working very, very hard in difficult situations,” Infantino said.

“Of course I am not Qatari, I am not an Arab, I am not African, I am not gay, I am not disabled. But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated against as a foreigner in a foreign country.

“As a child I was bullied because I had red hair and freckles, plus I was Italian so imagine.

“What do you do then? You try to engage, make friends. Don’t start accusing, fighting, insulting, you start engaging. This is what we should be doing.”

Infantino’s deluded rant made a bad situation worse, further trashing FIFA’s destroyed reputation and snuffing out what little enthusiasm there was for an utterly joyless World Cup.

It was The Sunday Times in London that first reported Qatar’s top football official allegedly used secret slush funds to make payments worth millions of dollars to senior football officials to gain support in the 2010 vote.

Last year, The Guardian reported more than 6500 migrant workers from south Asia had died in Qatar in the decade since it was awarded the right to host the event, though not all these deaths were linked to the World Cup projects.

All this in a country which, according to Human Rights Watch, requires women to obtain permission from their male guardians to marry and show their marriage certificate to access certain forms of sexual health care.

“The magic of football, as soon as the ball rolls, people will concentrate on that because that’s what people want,” Infantino continued somewhat hopefully in his hour-long lecture.

This quote neatly summaries exactly what FIFA wants — for everyone watching on television at home or in the pub to forget all the complicated questions about moral and geopolitical dilemmas.

FIFA would much prefer we slump into our couches for the next four weeks and focus on the football. “Everyone has difficult lives, we want to have a moment where we don’t have to think about this,” the FIFA boss added.

He might not want the world “to think about this” but just days into the tournament, Qatar 2022 is already the most politically-charged major sporting event in my lifetime.

The captains of seven European teams were this week pressured into dropping plans to wear the OneLove armbands in a gesture of solidarity with LGBTQ+ people in a country where same-sex relationships are illegal.

FIFA said it would penalise the likes of England’s Harry Kane and Wales’ Gareth Bale with yellow cards if they displayed the rainbow colours on their sleeve — a threat that was shocking but at the same time predictable.

I guess Infantino did not “feel gay” when he woke up that morning.

At least the Iranian team showed the courage of their convictions by refusing to sing their national anthem in an apparent expression of support for anti-government protests in their home country.

It was ironic that it fell to another country with an appalling human rights record, Saudi Arabia, to ignite the on-field action with a 2-1 defeat of football powerhouse Argentina on Tuesday evening.

Upsets — and this was one of the biggest in World Cup history — should be some of the most memorable moments from any World Cup, but this sports fan was left with an empty feeling.