Infantino comes out with guns blazing

FIFA Prez Launches Astonishing Counter-Offensive Against Western Media; Backs Indian Fans Who Were Branded 'Fake'

- Siddharth Saxena

Is football - fandom, emotion, hope, disappointment, glory and identity - the preserve of a select few, and only they get to decide who can partake in this global communion because they run the show, decide the TV times?

Football's version of the European refugee crisis, where boatloads of Africans were being turned back by the First World, you could say, is being played out at the World Cup here in Qatar. Among the many exposes and investigations carried out by sections of the western media, was the 'revelation' that the Qatari authorities had hired 'paid fans' to show support for the teams, and thus, depict a healthy following as the World Cup kick-off neared.

The implicit assumption, mainly from the white world that since the fans didn't look like them, or the European teams that they were welcoming with song and dance and thus couldn't be genuine, hasn't gone down well with the large population of south Asian extraction that forms the bulk of the workforce here in Qatar.

But was it being politicised by the masters of the sport here a day before the most controversial World Cup was set to kick off, to make a point in what was becoming a personal battle of oneupmanship between the European media and FIFA over the hosting of the mega-event in a discriminatory regime as Qatar's?