Leave this article immediately if you expect from him an in-depth sociopolitical analysis of Qatar with only a week's stay to cover the World Cup, that is, going from one place to another without taking your eyes and hands off the computer too much. In the same way that they would not ask a Qatari reporter, sent to Barcelona with the mission of reviewing a major sporting event, to explain to them in a seven-day visit the Spanish or Catalan social and political situation (poor individual) in a week. , I propose here to speak only of what I see. About things as profound as the following: if the weekend here in Qatar is Friday and Saturday, is our Monday its Sunday and our Thursday its Friday? (I keep thinking of the Qatari reporter, now fleeing to the Pyrenees, stressed by the impossible assignment he had been given, buying a tent at the Decathlon, eventually meeting a Catalan woman and, after seven years, not seven days, of happy cohabitation and marriage, still feeling incapable of reasonably explaining the unfathomable mysteries of the Catalan political black hole).
Also, ladies and gentlemen, in a World Cup, as in Instagram photos, nothing is what it seems. A huge parenthesis opens to make up the (bad) local customs and accommodate millions of visitors from other countries and give a fictitious image that does not always fit. Everything is distorted. Do you remember the World Cup in Russia? I was there for three weeks and it looked like Disneyland. Not a word about the degrading treatment that was given (and is given) to the gay community and a few lines to look good about Putin's dictatorial tics and his persecution of any opposition element. Today it is bombing Ukraine and toying with the possibility of World War III.
Do you remember Barcelona 92? That was a joke 24 hours a day. Another great parenthesis that. Differences between that Barcelona and this Doha? Many. At three in the morning here you can go to the supermarket, cut your hair or wash the car. And of sex and alcohol, well, little trace. Which brings me to ask the big question of this World Cup. "A World Cup is a World Cup without drunk Englishmen throwing chairs?".
We live in a cynical world. We should know by now in the game.
That's why in Qatar I personally have been moved by genuine stories. The Iran players really taking a chance and then having a wonderful football game against Wales. The anger at the break of Hervé Renard, coach of Saudi Arabia, motivating his players, much more than Prince Mohamed bin Salman giving them each a Rolls Royce for winning Argentina.
The money from the Persian Gulf, the Qatari in this case, bought the World Cup. We already knew that. But they even told us it would be sustainable! I had never seen such a waste of energy in my life. Air conditioning at 17 degrees with 23 outside and more lights than in Vigo.
The great parenthesis of light and color. We have football left, which is no small thing.
