Who’d be a footballer today?

It was 2 December 2010. I remember it well. I was at the BBC at the time, on a team writing an end-of-year round-up satire show. And I genuinely thought, when I heard someone talking about Qatar hosting the World Cup, that they were discussing a possible sketch, sounding it out for plausibility. It rather suggested, as Tom Lehrer said of Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize, that satire was redundant if not actually dead.

Back then, there were so many other geophysical and cultural objections to Qatar getting the World Cup. There was the heat, and the fact that it would necessitate the tournament taking place in December, disrupting all the traditional European seasons. There was the fact that Qatar had no tradition of football, no sides worth mentioning, no stadiums, no fanbase, no grass. The fact that Qatar is generally described as ‘illiberal’ on camera, and ‘medieval’ once the mics are off, barely registered.

Qatar was technically eligible to host, of course, being part of the ‘world’. And of course, money on the scale that this tiny diamond-encrusted tar pit boasts had barely to clear its throat let alone talk, before qualms were quashed and misgivings gave way.

Gradually, as the infrastructure for the winning bid was retroactively built, stories began to emerge of the mounting deaths of migrant labourers – the very kindest terms in which their contractual relationship can be described. An estimated 6,500 people died, according to some reports, though of course it is virtually impossible to be sure – a bad sign in itself.

All of this is too big a burden to place on the England lads’ shoulders.

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