Football totally shamed by Fifa

By Hughie Southon

Seeing the Premier League season interrupted by the World Cup was always going to be bad news.

But that the tournament should be held in Quatar after stadiums were built by people who have since died, whilst others have lived in cruel conditions. is a cancer on the name of football.

I have made my personals feelings clear on the ClaretandHugh Facebook page, but thankfully top journo and Hammers fan Martin Samuel has added his voice to those who are feeling shamed by Fifa’s decision.

International football in itself holds no attraction for me to be frank but that is the most minor of points on this occasion although it seems to have taken Gary Neville a while to discover what many of us have known for a long while.

I won’t be watching the ghastly tournament against a background of the behaviour that was inflicted on people of that nation with – as Martin says – football doing little to stop it.

He writes in the Mail at MARTIN SAMUEL: English football doesn’t need Netflix or even third-party broadcasting partners | Daily Mail Online: Following on from the armband of protest so meaningful that Wales left theirs in a dressing room in Belgium, Gary Neville has visited Qatar — with a TV crew in tow, naturally — and it turns out it’s not a nice place.

Of course, with the World Cup less than two months away and its presence there now sadly unavoidable, these interventions are without purpose. It’s happening. People have died. People have lived in horrid, cruel, inhospitable conditions for many years. And football did the bare minimum to stop that.

The blame falls on FIFA, rightly. Yet Qatar was awarded the World Cup almost 12 years ago. The brutality could have been stopped had more of those with influence stood against it earlier: nations, federations, even players.

The club captain of Manchester United at the time, for instance, was a prominent figure with a strong voice and authority among his fellow professionals. Such a person could have started a movement in this country, that could have spread.

If England and English footballers had acted, with so much influence in a cosmopolitan league, other nations and their players might also have got involved.

Who knows what such a reaction could have achieved? It’s too late now. Leave that thought with you.