We football fans are happy because this year we are starting is a World Cup year. And it is known that for us life is what happens between the World Cup and the World Cup.. But let’s agree that the next one will be a rare World Cup. First, because it is only played in November! Where are we going to get the patience to wait eleven months to see the Scaloneta, I dont know. But the truth is that we will have to hold out until November 21 – when it begins – and a little more, until December 18, to find out if Messi will finally be lifting the World Cup. The only good thing is that if we are not champions at least we will have to endure a few more days to celebrate something: Christmas.
Then it will be a rare World Cup because it will be played in a country that is already spelled strange: Qatar. Explain to me why the “Q” next to the “a”. If the “q” and the “u” are one of those irreplaceable pairs: like French and Beruti, like Batman and Robin, like Bochini and Bertoni, or like Wanda Nara and the media scandal. And tell me with one hand on your heart and the other on your cell phone – while you continue reading this note – if you ever heard anything from Qatar other than the airline that is promoted on Boca’s shirt. What football history does Qatar have for hosting the biggest football event? Name me a Qatari player and I’ll give you my car. I don’t have a car, but it doesn’t matter, I buy it or I steal it and I give it to you at the touch. I give you my house! Tell me the lead of some memorable Qatari team and I give you my bright studio with bathroom and low expenses.
What’s more, I give you the advantage of using Google to pass me some old radio recording where some journalist like Dante Zavatarelli or Macaya Márquez is heard praising the mastery of some old Qatari team. And I redouble the bet. Show me a magazine The graphic old where a Borocoto or a Felix Daniel Frascara, and if you want an Osvaldo Ardizzone, praise some legendary footballer born in Qatar. Does not exist. As there is no history of the passion that football arouses in its capital Doha or in the rest of the country. I want the video of a Qatari fan excited singing and jumping with his turban in the colors of Deportivo Camello or Beduinos Juniors or whatever the clubs of that country host the World Cup are called or whoring because they did not charge him a penalty in the final of the Copa Libertadores de Arabia or the Supercopa Aladino or whatever the Qatari professional league is called, which I don’t even think is professional. You will not find a couple of poor Qatari assholes in the Persian Gulf suburbs – those whose parents pay for the Plan Sheikhs and Jeqas de Hogar – playing a mince in the sand, improvising the bows with 2 pairs of turbans and playing for the Fatay and Coca to ever dream of scoring a goal with the “Hand of Allah”. Not at all. You will only find desert. This is what Qatar has: desert and oil wells. And Arab sheikhs counting petrodollars.
Qatar, tell me what it feels like to host a World Cup that you don’t feel. What does it feel like to be a country without a football tradition and with extreme temperatures (it is not played in November for nothing)? Or at least tell me … How many million petrodollars will your sheiks and princes have paid to FIFA to host a World Cup? There are no answers. no? All very strange. In a rare World Cup.
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