There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the World Cup being played in Qatar. If you didn’t notice, it is because like me you know that soccer-type football is boring. But the story does bear some scrutiny.

The process through which Qatar won the bid to host the World Cup was corrupt (shocking, I know), the conditions under which the stadiums and hotels were built were literally murderous for the migrant workers (Qataris are rich and don’t work), and worst of all, Qatar at the last moment went back on its promise to allow beer to be served in the stadium, after more than a decade of promising to loosen their laws to allow spectators to imbibe.

The last, of course, is unforgivable. A million people from around the world traveled to watch the games, and by God they were supposed to be able to get drunk while doing so. It is a tradition!

Actually, as silly as it sounds, that is a real problem. Selling beer was part of the deal, and Qatar breaking the deal on this is hardly unique. It is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to FIFA’s willingness to sell out the West and our norms in order to chase that sweet Qatari money. FIFA literally sold out their own fans, and soccer may never be the same.

First let me get this off my chest: like the Metric system, the rest of the world prefers an inferior product.  They prefer soccer (what they mistakenly call “football,” which as we all know includes huge men in tights hurting each other) to the real thing. Americans have the right in this, as we do with the Imperial measuring system. We went to the moon with the Imperial system, so there. And our football has many fewer fake injuries. QED.

The Simpsons got soccer right decades ago:

But we will never convince the world that soccer is a mere fad. They take it very seriously for some reason. No accounting for the inferior taste of foreigners.

Needless to say, soccer matters everywhere but here, and literally billions of people follow it closely and care deeply about it in the way that Steelers fans care about their team for some reason. So the corruption actually matters.

The sellout began early on in the process–over a decade ago, when Qatar decided to buy the honor of hosting the World Cup, and the Europeans decided to sell it, while both pretended the whole process was perfectly fine:

American investigators and FIFA itself have since said multiple FIFA board members accepted bribes to swing the vote to Qatar. (Platini was not among them.) A broad corruption investigation into how FIFA conducts business led to dozens of arrests. Those cases and others helped bring down the entire leadership of FIFA, and almost toppled the institution itself.

But the decision also irrevocably altered the economics of top-flight soccer. Having won the World Cup, Qatar quickly moved to establish itself as a true power in the sport. Within a year of the lunch at the Élysée Palace, Qatari interests had bought the French team Paris St.-Germain, and a Qatari-owned sports network had begun pouring money into European soccer by buying up broadcasting rights. That influx of cash not only affected what top players earned and where they played: It also briefly threatened to drive an irreconcilable wedge between a handful of the sport’s richest teams and the rest of the game.

It is easy to shrug one’s shoulders and be indifferent to the corruption of what amounts to an entertainment industry, but that would be a mistake. First of all, the shady deals that were struck that put this whole process in motion were cut in the office of the French President himself. The corruption went all the way to the top, with the elite of the Elite™ choosing to sell out their own citizens, whose passions genuinely are wrapped up in soccer, for a taste of that sweet oil money.

Moving the World Cup to Qatar didn’t mean just a change of venue: it required interrupting the regular soccer season for the first time, as the World Cup normally takes place at a time when Qatar has literally killing heat. So the soccer season was essentially called off for the World Cup, and will resume once FIFA collects its checks from Qatar.

Everything in soccer was upended to please Qatar, who until they decided to host the World Cup weren’t even minor players in the sport, as fans or players.

Just as billions of dollars are exchanged over subsidies for stadiums and massive deals are cut over American sports franchises, the same happens in soccer on a worldwide scale. Big money and big politics go together, and the people who claim to be on your side sell you out. That matters.

Second, the sellout can go far beyond the money and the entertainment. In order to bend the knee to the Qataris FIFA has turned its rhetorical guns on its fans, almost none of whom actually are Qataris.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said Western criticism of Qatar is "profoundly unjust" and that "what we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons." https://t.co/yKGVixJ0Yl pic.twitter.com/TOJcj3YN2g

— CNN (@CNN) November 19, 2022

You see, when push comes to shove FIFA–which claims often to uphold the rights and dignity of the oppressed–Gianni Infantino in the same press conferences claims solidarity with oppressed people–will turn its guns on the West and demand we shut up about our values because we are the real moral criminals.

What Qatar is doing right now–working migrants literally to death to build stadiums, imprisoning and torturing gay people–cannot be criticized because we are at least as awful and should be apologizing to Qataris.

Uh huh.

Here is Infantino expressing how passionate he is about social justice:

🗣 “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.”

President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino with a strange speech on the eve of the 2022 World Cup pic.twitter.com/f1xIfWAjom

— Football Daily (@footballdaily) November 19, 2022

The President of FIFA–a very powerful man indeed who can get in to see almost any world leader, knows your pain:

Don’t bend your knee to any of these people. They are trash.

The World Cup impacts me not at all, aside from having to watch commercials trying to convince me I should care. But what does concern me and should concern everybody is how quickly our Elite™ turns on us as soon as they can get a better deal from somebody else.

Gianni Infantino: "Today I feel gay."

Also Gianni Infantino:
'FIFA will punish any player wearing the #OneLove armband in support of LGBT people.'

FIFA is an ugly and morally bankrupt cartel in charge of the beautiful game. #FIFAWorldCup #Infantino pic.twitter.com/JgGmf2D5lo

— Eddie Burfi (@EddieBurfi) November 21, 2022

Every precious moral statement they make is a lie; every lecture they make is propaganda; nothing they say can be taken at face value. They will sell their own constituents out in a heartbeat, whether for a buck or a bit more power.

They are awful people and should be mercilessly ridiculed, not listened to.

UPDATE: You have to see this to believe it:

MSNBC's @AymanM: Will "any of these American pundits grandstanding about human rights [in Qatar] call for the US to be stripped of hosting the 2026 World Cup for the way elected leaders … have rolled back reproductive rights or are trying to ban the word gay in public schools?" pic.twitter.com/9pkC3zIeTq

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 21, 2022