One World Cup, Two Games

Qatar's not the first problematic host. But as always, when the matches begin, everything else fades away

- Marcela Mora y Araujo

There is consensus that this World Cup will be a tournament of many ‘firsts’ – first to be hosted at this time of year, for starters, with most of the participating players having played club games as recently as this weekend. And first in an Arab country.

In fact, it’s a World Cup of so many ‘firsts’ that in many ways it feels like it might be the last. Or maybe we’ve had the last, in Russia 2018 (also mired in controversy) and this is the true ‘first’ of the World Cups as they will be from now on, going forward.

The seeming contradiction between our adoration of the game – the truly beautiful and most noble of games – and our concerns as humans for the conditions of our fellow humans sits uncomfortably on the eve of this most strangest of World Cups about to kick off in Qatar.

When the 1978 Cup took place too, debates regarding whether the hosting should go ahead had flared up – and died down. Argentina had already been awarded the hosting of that Cup by the time a military coup took over its government. Even within the resistance, from the organised groups working abroad to the armed revolutionaries and the intellectuals dissenting, the view that football shouldn’t stop prevailed.

As Graciela Daleo, a detainee at a detention camp near the Monumental football stadium told me years later: “A ghostly bond would develop between torturers and torturees whereby the same guy that had given you an electric shock in the morning would sit and chat about the goals in the evening.”