If FIFA want us to focus on the football, they’ll have to do better than a World Cup opener of no consequence and featuring little jeopardy.
As the sun started to set in the middle of this cold, autumn Sunday afternoon, the 2022 World Cup finals slowly started to creak to life. But notably, the opening ceremony for the tournament was not covered at all by the BBC’s television channels, instead being squirreled away on iPlayer (with the only accompaniment coming from a simultaneous feed from Radio Five Live) while the BBC’s coverage was unlike anything seen before for the start of a sporting event on the television in this country.
BBC One only cut over to the tournament at all with just an hour to go before kick-off. And then when they did, they only spent a couple of minutes on the football itself before handing over to half an hour on the human rights and corruption issues that have left this tournament so far beyond the pale for so many people in the first place, featuring correspondents such as Ros Atkins and a particularly scathing Alan Shearer.
And no, you you didn’t miss much, if you couldn’t face the idea of getting all the way into iPlayer just to watch an opening ceremony which passed by with a slickly-produced display of 21st century light entertainment banality. It was nice to see some old tournamnt mascots again, though Naranjito’s stare seems to become increasingly thousand-yard and his grin more rictus as the years go by, while World Cup Willie loitered almost entirely out of sight and out of mind at the back of the stage. Presumably getting too vigorous is not recommended at his age.
From just watching the game itself, the Qatar World Cup could be hosted anywhere in the world, but this is a process of homogenisation of the game’s culture that started decades ago rather than in the last few weeks or months. If anything, with the heartfelt belting out of the national anthems and handshakes between all the players and its infantilising countdown to the kick-off, the build-up felt essentially like Generic Football Experience #29, one of those optimistic-looking drawings that usually accompany the announcement of a new stadium come to life.
We all know what we all know about Qatar, about how they’ve had to build a national team in just over ten years, as well as having a go at building a football culture at the same time. They don’t seem to have been very successful at either. There was nothing for the commentary team to…
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