the case
Julia Zonca
SENT TO DOHA
The football boss takes control of the World Cup with a 50-minute monologue. Gianni Infantino begins at Kennedy: “I feel Qatari, I feel Arab, I feel African, I feel migrant, I feel gay” and ends with the sign to be placed on this month in the gulf: “Do not spit”.
Inside is the king’s speech, on the attack, as you do when you know it won’t be a quiet day and so you might as well shake it first. A tirade on Europe that points the finger, “with what he has done in the last 3000 years, he should apologize for the next 3000 and instead gives lessons in morality, with a double standard”. The first major global event hosted by an Arab country officially becomes a tug of war between the West and the Middle East and football will also play this match, perhaps it will even be able to dispose of it. But now we are at the crossroads between two cultures and Infantino’s words have been feeding a current that has been under tension for days. The beer first granted and then withdrawn from the agreements, the national teams that recover the phenomena engaged in the championships of the old continent, the universe of football that changes borders and the old Europe worried about losing ground, a series of latent issues that froth in a wave in the infantinian version of «I have a dream». In the dream, however, there is a bit of everything and a bit too much.
There is the personal memory of a family who emigrated to Switzerland after the war, “in very harsh conditions”, there is the memory of a red-haired child bullied for being “Italian with freckles”, there are figures used to keep the problems at a distance: “25,000 migrants died trying to get to Europe, but no one is demanding compensation for them”. Instead, Amnesty has asked Fifa for 440,000 euros to be divided among the families of the victims at work.
And he did not like the speech: “Infantino spoke of something else, of the theme of deaths at sea and the criminal policies that cause them, we have been dealing with them for decades”. Amnesty isn’t reporting only on Qatar, and it’s not the only organization to feel duped by the rant.
The king’s speech, by its nature, is at times megalomaniacal, almost always absolving, deliberately misleading, “if you have to criticize, blame me, not Qatar, which in any case defends itself very well”. Contains legitimate nuisances. Whether or not the organizers have paid some fans to appear for the arrivals of the teams, one cannot stand to question the likelihood of the sequel, many Indians, Nepalese, Pakistanis who work here have put on their favorite shirt and go around proudly. It doesn’t matter that they don’t look like the faces of the best-known curves, labeling them as hairpieces is prejudice. The beer question has brought with it useless subtexts, Qatar has the right to deny it, they are not the only ones to do so, the timing is out of place and Infantino also sets aside the one «I think you can go three hours without a beer», alluding to the time spent in one stadium for the match, even if this is the World Cup which allows more than one match a day and the dry weather expands. Of course, the problem can’t be alcohol, unfortunately it’s bigger because gays don’t have the right to show themselves here, by law and Infantino clarifies that a place with discriminatory rules can and will be a candidate to host future World Cups.
He repeats «everyone is welcome here», until they agree to hide and once again puts «the hypocrisy of Europe back into circulation. In Switzerland, at the 1954 World Cup, I don’t think gays could get noticed and it was wrong, in Europe we got there, give Qatar time to do the same». But if today’s Qatar looks like Switzerland in 1954, why give it a Mondial? And why settle for pretending nothing happened, which also applies to the captains’ rainbow bands: they have not been approved, it is unlikely that they will be punished, but Fifa prefers neutral lettering, in the name of universality. Just when the king’s speech crunches the most is the twist. Communications director Bryan Swanson, sitting next to him, says: «I’m gay, you listen to public words, I listen to private ones, so don’t think that Fifa doesn’t care about inclusiveness. Infantino cares. King Gianni saved from a coming out while b started to stammer. —