The audaciousness of Qatar to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup – Andreas Weitzer

In a few days we will know which country’s team will be football’s next world champion. A lot of prestige comes with it, and the economy of the winning nation will get boosted by national pride. But what we know already, what we knew long before the first kick-off, was that Qatar should never, ever have hosted the world’s most widely viewed single sporting event.

Why, it forced 715 million viewers worldwide and 1.5 million visitors to forgo the joys of limitless beer, vuvuzela dim and well-meaning fistfights to brawl over the rights of transgender people instead.

The barrage of critique flowing through Western media was puzzling. First was the accusation of bribery: A small desert nation of three million residents, only in existence since 1971, with no football tradition to talk of and no venues to host the event, could only have launched their winning bid by trickery.

Grudgers seemed vindicated when Qatar was embargoed in 2017 by its bullying neighbours Saudi Arabia and UAE shutting ports and air links to the country and sealing off its border.

Qatar, which shares a vast gas field with Iran, was excoriated for its peaceful neighbourly relations with the Islamic Republic and its...