Knockout Competition

Who’d have thunk it? Right now we’re not hearing so much about migrant workers or human rights, simply because the World Cup football is rivetting. And it’s particularly rivetting at this stage - the final games in the qualifying groups. Regardless of how well any time is playing, the format cooks up instant drama, where in some cases any two of the four might qualify, and a goal scored elsewhere might suddenly boot you out of the competition. FIFA, predictably, are thinking of ditching this format, because a longer, more boring pattern would bring in more teams, create more games and suck in more revenue. Let’s hope they’ll see sense, though the track record doesn’t encourage optimism.

None of this compulsive quality is actually down to Qatar, although to be fair the overall management seems to have been efficient, and money has done the things that money will do. In one key respect they’ve managed to exacltly mirror how we do things in the West - their version of VAR is quite as cockeyed and intrusive as ours. So embarrassing, watching a ref view the same footage over and over again, because he doesn’t think it shows that he was wrong, but he hasn’t got the nerve to be summoned to the magic screen, and then announce his conviction that he was right in the first place. Huge anticlimax, massive undermining of his authority - who is it, exactly, that gains from this charade? Certainly not the players, or the fans.