Comment: Derision and division? Infantino's legacy in Qatar

By Andrew Warshaw

November 21 - Two weeks ago, as organizers put the finishing touches to 12 years of planning, the FIFA President and his trusted number two, clearly alarmed that their flagship tournament was being undermined by constant criticism of Qatar's human rights record, took the unprecedented step of imploring the 32 finalists to focus on football and not preach morals.

Fast forward to last Saturday on the eve of the big kickoff and Gianni Infantino, with Trump-like exultation, escalated the rhetoric, using the traditional tournament-eve press conference to spit the most delusional, toxic rant in the organization's checkerboard history of corruption.

If Infantino's 57-minute exercise in self-aggrandizement as he attacked the West for 3,000 years of exploitation and colonialism was meant to sweep aside all posturing on Qatar's treatment of migrant workers and to the LBGTQ+ community and focus on football, it has backfired dramatically.

The FIFA president behaved like a football czar, accusing the West of hypocrisy, even citing his own experience of being bullied at school to somehow justify his self-obsessed, spurious rant .

Having begged teams only a fortnight ago not to teach morals, who was the hypocrite now?

As the cringe-worthy monologues say, it was up there, far more outrageous than the worst excesses of his predecessor, Sepp Blatter who, to remind you, voted for the United States as as hosts of 2022.

Surprisingly, Infantino even seemed to suggest at one point that Qatar offered more hope for refugees than Europe. Yet, according to the media, last year Qatar took in only 197 refugees, despite being one of the richest countries in the world.

Amidst all the self-delusion and bowing down to his royal hosts, Infantino conveniently forgot one thing. It is exactly because of Western pressure, not in spite of it, that labor rights reforms, as they exist, have taken place in Qatar.

He also ignored the fact that when he took office at FIFA, he made a big play of promising to sweep away corruption and make FIFA a clean organization. Maybe someone should remind him that awarding the World Cup to Qatar, even before his time, was intrinsically linked to the very corruption that brought FIFA to its knees.

So it may not be the wisest course of action to spend nearly an entire hour praising the supposed merits of the Gulf state – despite the perfectly reasonable argument that the Middle East , crazy about football, as a region, has every right to host.< /p>

In one respect, Infantino might have been right. Well, sort of. The last-minute U-turn canceling stadium beer sales - clearly as a result of pressure on FIFA from a Muslim nation frightened by the prospect of destroying strict traditions - on paper shouldn't be too bad. < /p>

But suspending the carrot to make it disappear at the last minute is cynical. Plus, of course, there's now the very real threat of a legal wrangle with Budweiser.

It was, quite simply, a gigantic own goal by the most powerful man in football, exacerbated by his chief communications officer, former Sky correspondent Bryan Swanson, deciding the time was right, so to protect his boss' already damaged reputation in front of hundreds of reporters, only to reveal that he himself is gay.

As an exercise in deflecting criticism of Qatar's human rights record, this was all utter nonsense, let alone unnecessary.

But will Infantino care? Remember those misguided cries of "Four More Years" before Donald Trump, perfectly fairly, was removed from office?

Like it or not, four more years is exactly what Infantino will receive when he is re-elected unopposed next year.

This means he essentially has carte blanche to say what he likes whenever he wants without having to worry about the consequences in terms of his power base.

Perhaps that partly explains why he thought he could get away with Saturday's extraordinary tirade that made headlines, almost nothing positive, around the world.

It was a massive gamble that may have been an attempt to bring different cultures together to celebrate the game's greatest centerpiece, but only served to present it, not for the first time, as a despotic leader who lost the plot. Again, what former American figurehead does this remind you of?

Instead of preaching to the masses like some sort of bigoted fanatic, if Infantino really wants to show Qatar in the best possible light, he should leave it to the fans, thousands of whom flock to the tiny Gulf state to spread a little happiness.

This is surely the most effective way to justify Qatar's original motto, Expect Amazing, and bridge the gap between the eas...