Ken Early: Infantino still a master at telling the powerful what they want to hear

Gianni Infantino has promised that Qatar 2022 will be the “best World Cup ever”. On Saturday morning at Doha’s International Convention Centre, the Fifa president did his bit by opening his press conference with lines that have already entered football legend.

“Today, I have very strong feelings. Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker…”

Much of the reaction has highlighted the absurdity of Infantino suggesting that he can empathise with workers in Doha’s labour camps because he was bullied as a child in Switzerland for having red hair and freckles. But the people he really meant for us to empathise with were the first ones on his list.

It is the Qatari hosts, rather than the more obviously oppressed groups he mentioned, who feel as though they have been “bullied” by the Western media - the same media who were the ultimate target of everything Infantino said.

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Let’s follow Infantino’s invitation and try to understand the Qatari point of view. A summary: hosting the 2022 World Cup is a proud moment not only for Qatar, but for the Middle East and the wider Arab and Muslim worlds. We in Qatar have spent €200 billion to create the most extravagant sporting infrastructure the world has ever seen. But rather than come and enjoy it and admire our achievements and praise what we’ve done, you only complain and criticise and denigrate and make accusations. Accusations which are rich coming from you, the authors of history’s greatest crimes.

Infantino’s articulation: “I think for what we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people.” Many of the West’s softer critics - like, say, Vladimir Putin - restrict their focus to more recent historic episodes: colonialism, slavery, industrial destruction of the planet, etc. The Fifa president has taken the recent Silicon Valley craze for long-termism and turned its lens upon the past. His accounting of Europe’s shame goes all the way back to the Bronze Age Collapse.

That said, his agile lawyerly mind remains capable of short-termism, depending on the situation. A couple of minutes earlier, he had said: “It’s not easy ... to read all this criticism of decisions which have been taken 12 years ago when nobody of us was there, and now everyone knows that we have to make the best out of it.”

Critical reporters from Western outlets should reflect on whether they really have any right to criticise, after what the Romans did to Carthage

Infantino thus absolved himself of any responsibility for the process that gave the World Cup to Qatar: we are separated from that moment by an ocean of time – 12 years! – and Infantino was nobody in football in those days, just a humble secretary-general of Uefa. At the same time, critical reporters from Western outlets should reflect on whether they really have any right to criticise, after what the Romans did to Carthage.

But let’s getback to the Qatari point of view. In Qatar they wonder, why do you, the Western media, do this? Why, instead of marvelling at the architecture of Lusail Stadium and the smoothness and swiftness of the Doha metro, do you persist in talking about the exploitation of the people that built them?

[ Qatar bans the sale of alcohol at World Cup stadiums just 48 hours before opening game ]

You do it because it kills you to see the success story that is Qatar. You cannot bear to see your former imperial subjects richer than you by far, you cannot bear to be surpassed, you cannot accept that the future no longer belongs to you alone. And so you will do anything to criticise us, to undermine us, to bully us, and to claim false moral superiority over us.

From this perspective, it’s all hypocrisy. The reporting about human rights looks like so much ammunition for the Western infowar on Qatar – an onslaught that is fuelled not by any genuine concern for the issues, but by crude racism and envy. From this perspective, the criticisms are morbid symptoms of impotent rage, the dying howls of a West that has lost its power but will never lose its arrogance.

This is the rhetoric of the new multipolarity, which you can hear everywhere from the speeches of the Russian president to the off-record briefings of Manchester City. The style, once mastered, is wonderfully adaptable. For example: how to respond if you are the Fifa president, and the host country announces two days before the start of the World Cup that there will be no beer sold at games, making it look as though you’ve lost control of your own tournament? Simply turn it into another lecture on Western arrogance and entitlement.

“I think personally if, for three hours a day, you cannot drink a beer, you will survive,” said Infantino. “Maybe it’s a big thing because it’s a Muslim country, I don’t know.” (He’s just asking questions.) In truth, the late change was significant because it showed Fifa aren’t really running their own event. “I feel 200 per cent in control of this World Cup” Infantino insisted – but then he also feels African, disabled, gay, a migrant worker, female and so on.

It may be dishonest to respond to criticism of Qatar’s human rights record by accusing Europe of 3,000 years of crime, but don’t underestimate the enthusiastic reception for this throughout much of the rest of the world, where nationalists find in Europe an often deserving and always convenient scapegoat.

English journalists pointed out to Infantino that his remarks had been received badly on social media, where people were mocking his absurd claims to universal empathy (e.g. @snowrespecter on Twitter: “He drinks a Qatari drink. He drinks an Arab drink. He drinks an African drink. He drinks a gay drink. He sings the songs that remind him of the disabled times. He sings the songs that remind him of the migrant worker times.”)

But you didn’t have to look far to find many people saying that Infantino was speaking the truth. The West underestimates how much it is resented in the rest of the world, and as for the Western media, they are widely hated even in the West. Infantino is the President of an organisation that includes more than 200 countries; there is method in his madness. Saturday morning’s performance was a politician saying what the majority of his voters – and his wealthy hosts – wanted to hear.

[ How Qatar secured the 2022 Fifa World Cup ]

At last night’s opening game in Al-Bayt, Infantino sat in the royal box: to his right the Emir of Qatar, to his left, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. This must be what “engagement” looks like, Infantino-style. At the 2018 opening game in Moscow, it had been MBS to his right and Putin to his left – and what better example of the efficacy of Infantino’s methods than Russia since 2018.

The word is that Infantino is keen on the Saudis hosting in 2030: a joint bid with Egypt and Greece has been mooted. We look forward to hearing the Fifa president ask how Western journalists can have so much to say about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, yet remain silent on the Glencoe massacre of 1692.

The potentates sat and endured an abysmal game of football. Ecuador led 2-0 after half an hour despite having a goal ruled out by VAR for offside. Qatar’s Saad Abdullah al-Sheeb might be the worst goalkeeper ever to play in a World Cup. At half-time, the Qataris started to leave, first the VIPS, then everyone else. Most of the global TV audience were presumably doing likewise. Only the Ecuador section stayed full – full of fans singing “Queremos cerveza!” (“We want beer!”)

By the end, the mostly-empty stadium looked like it had just hosted Scotland v Wales in the 2011 Carling Nations Cup at the Aviva, not the World Cup opening match in a country that is reported to have spent €200 billion getting ready for this moment. Best World Cup ever? It’s already in the running to be the weirdest.