You might almost forget that there will be football played too. No modern World Cup has opened with so little anticipation of the actual matches. Most pre-tournament talk has been about Qatar’s transgressions. And for football fans, the club game reigned supreme until last Sunday.
But I arrived in the Gulf state intending to enjoy the football, while my colleagues keep reporting on human rights abuses. The trick is to hold two thoughts in our heads simultaneously: not to let the absolute monarchy’s attempted sportswashing succeed, while also relishing the sport. This is the show that unites the planet, from Tigray to Addis Ababa and from Kyiv to Moscow — where the stadium that hosted the previous World Cup final is now shut off from the world. Planetary joy has not abounded lately. So who is going to win?
The bookmakers’ favourites are Brazil, followed by Argentina, and there is a case for that. The quality of Brazil’s squad is rivalled only by France’s. Leo Messi’s Argentina are unbeaten in 36 games since 2019, when they overhauled their squad after their hilariously disorderly 2018 campaign.