FIFA president Gianni Infantino delivered an extraordinary speech on the eve of the World Cup, in which he accused the West of moral hypocrisy.
In what was supposed to be a 45-minute question-and-answer session with the media in Doha before Sunday’s opening match, Infantino delivered a rambling monologue that lasted nearly an hour in which he strongly defended the migrant worker policy. of Qatar and labeled those who said there were “paid fake fans”. ‘ in Qatar as a racist.
The build-up to the World Cup has been overshadowed by the treatment of LGBTQ+ people and the deaths of migrant workers, but Infantino said critics were not in a position to “give people moral lessons.”
Infantino said: “Today I have strong feelings. Today I feel Qatari, I feel Arab, I feel African, I feel gay, I feel disabled, I feel a migrant worker.
“Of course I’m not Qatari, I’m not Arab, I’m not African, I’m not gay, I’m not disabled. But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated against, bullied, like a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child, I was intimidated because I had red hair and freckles, plus I was Italian, so go figure I went into my room and cried.
“I feel sorry for FIFA and the Supreme Committee staff. They want to deliver here. I am proud to have this FIFA sign on my jacket. It will be the best World Cup ever. Qatar is ready.”
“For what we Europeans have been doing around the world in the last 3,000 years, we should apologize for the next 3,000 years before we start giving people moral lessons.
“How many of these European or Western business companies that make millions in Qatar, billions, how many of them have taken up the rights of migrant workers with the authorities?
“None of them, because if you change the legislation it means less profit. But we did it, and FIFA generates much less than any of these Qatari companies.”
‘This World Cup underpins how dirty the game is’
Sky Sports News senior reporter Melissa Reddy in Qatar:
“What absurd, offensive and misleading thing didn’t he say? This is extraordinary and unlike anything I’ve heard before.
“You don’t know what it feels like to be gay, Infantino, you don’t know what it feels like to be disabled, you don’t know what it feels like to be African and you can’t reconcile being discriminated against for being redheaded and sinning to any of the groups it has made reference have experienced You cannot deny their experience simply by saying that you ‘feel’ what they feel.
“It’s an absolutely amazing speech from the FIFA president and it’s probably even more amazing that he’s re-elected unopposed after being able to say things like this. He’s also taken the fact that Qatar recruits from the world’s poorest countries, millions who don’t they have nothing and are taken to do what human rights groups call modern slavery, he says it’s okay because they get paid more than at home.
“This is misleading, disrespectful, offensive, it is detrimental to the cause of trying to get better rights, better conditions for these workers to try to improve the human rights situation here.
“He talks about hypocrisy, I don’t think Infantino is the man to talk about hypocrisy. I don’t think whataboutism is the right route for a FIFA president to try to force change.
“If we all get stuck on what happened before or what is happening elsewhere and have to stay silent about it, we will never achieve any effective change. We would just never say anything because no country is intact and unblemished, but we are here. for the World Cup and on the eve of the tournament, this is what we are getting.
“He says it will be the best World Cup ever, I think this will be the World Cup that really underpins how dirty the game is.”
