Now that the temporary accommodation can be packed up, the adorable Moroccan mums have gone home and perhaps the greatest to ever do it has prevailed in perhaps the greatest final, it is time to take stock of the good and the ghastly circus that was the 2022 World Cup.
Watching a bemused Lionel Messi get draped in a bisht while Gianni Infantino desparately sought reasons not to relinquish his grip on the World Cup, Sunday’s trophy presentation was the perfect metaphor for the tournament in Qatar.
The moment should have been Argentina’s but still the hosts and football’s governing body tried desperately to use the sport’s greatest occasion to burnish their own reputations (it is after all the Fifa World Cup, remember).
Fortunately the previous two hours of breathless pandemonium that was the 2022 World Cup final were the perfect example of just why their attempts were doomed to fail.
To say football won, the bad guys lost is trite and, frankly, not entirely true. On some macro, geopolitical level beyond the interest of most of us, the Qatari regime no doubt got what they wanted out of the tournament while all the Stan Smith shoeboxes in the world would not be enough to stash the dollars Infantino and his cronies have made out of the affair.
It would also be wrong to allow Messi, the Saudi Arabian tourist ambassador with a conviction for tax fraud, to float above the swamp like a footballing deity.
Aside from the tarnished reputations of the frontmen of Qatar 2022, on and off the pitch, no amount of goal montages or banal, Fifa-approved platitudes on armbands will atone for the loss of life, the refusal to engage in any real way on issues of human rights or equality, the sheer waste. The fear is that now the party is over any Qatari promises to change and adapt will prove to be as empty as the eight huge football stadiums which now dot this tiny state with little previous football culture.
And yet, the naive football fan in me thinks Qatar and Fifa have lost.
When we think of Qatar we will think of workers’ rights, a refusal to see all people as equal, a rejection of any criticism.
When we think of Fifa we think of greed, crass exhibitonism and arrogance and a tin-eared refusal to engage in reasonable debate. What kind of legacy is that?
But when we think of the 2022 World Cup our minds will fill with images and emotions of wonderful football which transcend any association with Qatar or Fifa.
We’ll recall the thrilling emergence of Bellingham, Ounahi and Gvardiol. The departures of Modric, Van Gaal and Ronaldo. And above all, the magic of Messi, Mbappe and Morocco.
On Sunday, after a night of unscripted theatre like no other, Lionel Messi walked away from the stage-managed award of football’s greatest prize, quickly shrugged off the unwanted constraints of the Qatari bisht and disappeared into the embrace of his Argentina team-mates and his family, the love of the game. It was that easy.
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