Plus the scam Qatar forced upon inBev, originally beer was suppose to be sold in the stadium, which they paid ~75m for, then in the last minute Qatar said "no beer sales in the stadium".

Now I have no issues with restricting alcohol and even banning it, but with that last minute about face after taking money from that company, I think they are at least do a refund plus interest.

I'm not shedding a tear for a gigantic corporation getting slightly screwed over . It would have been incredibly easy for them to elect not to back the World Cup - it's in a country which is ideologically against their product, they had to go out of their way to be involved. But they they elected to go ahead, and took a (very minor) black eye as a result.

Think about all the shipping and logistics. How many tons of beers must be sitting there somewhere.

It should be refund + costs + damages.

Beer lasts for a while. I don't see how there are damages and losses here. Inbev is a major supporter of Fifa. They did not give money to the Qatari govt. If anything, there is a more healthier society because kids can now go to games as well.

In fact they should have announced long time ago. More people would have attended the games.

Kids could always go to games. The vast majority of people, even amongst the drinkers, are civil and respectful.

Episodes of violence in world cups are few and far between.

The vast majority of drinkers should be kept away from children.

The drinking brits would like to know how you came to that conclusion.

Interesting to mention Britain, where drinking in football stadia has not been permitted since the 1980s. Bit of an "own goal" so to speak :)

Haha. That owns everyone commenting here.

So the pictures of drinking brits fighting is actually from a rugby event? Who knew. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-59402277

There are no pictures of people fighting in that article. This thread is not going well for you, is it? :-P

> The vast majority of drinkers should be kept away from children.

So, no children in restaurants for dinner for example? Or family & friends barbecues? Or weddings? New Year's celebrations?

> The drinking brits would like to know how you came to that conclusion.

I live in the UK. Most people I know here drink, ranging from seldom and socially to frequent binges. I know perhaps one or two that I've seen become even slightly violent, and it's usually followed by an insurmountable amount of apologies and feelings of shame.

Seconded. I love soccer. I fondly remember waking up at 3:00 a.m. to watch many of the 1998 World Cup games. I think I have watched every single game since then. I know it is a small gesture, but I will not be watching a single match this go-round. The direct support of and kowtowing to such a corrupt government is disgusting.

with all the other issues in that country, I would like to see many teams hop back on the plane and say we will fly to another country, India, Australia, South America or somewhere else and compete there. Or at the very least withdraw.

How is this different from China hosting the winter Olympics or Russia before that? I fail to see how this is anything but arbitrarily treating others worse. The USA literally has an exception to the slavery amendment for prison labor

How is this arbitrarily treating them worse? We have a reason to do so and we can if we wish. Justice is rarely ever applied evenly so should we not apply it at all?

In China people are put in concentration camps, but they hosted the winter Olympics without this much fuss, so that certainly qualify as arbitrarily treating them worse.

There was definitely a lot of fuss around China and Xinjiang. The US did not send a delegation to the Olympics. https://www.csis.org/analysis/biden-boycott-2022-beijing-win...

The Qatari debacle is more focused though, because the controversy is directly affecting the players and the spectators (in particular the schedule shift and the alcohol row)

There is definitely much more fuss about this across MSM esp. in Europe.

Being more upset at lacking alcohol at a sports event over being upset at the existence of concentration camps in China is quite something. There is some palpable hypocrisy that's apparent if one holistically compares the coverage.

Probably the personal revolution of finding out that the game you love watching is actually quite boring unless you're pissed.

Also, the lack of appropriate alternate venues.

Developed countries do not want to host the Olympics anymore. By the time the 2022 selection was over, the only other candidate was Almaty, which isn’t less problematic and had a protest violently suppressed by Russian forces in January right before the 2022 Olympics.

The World Cup had Australia, South Korea, Japan and the US bidding to host 2022.

Because the Olympics, since ancient Greece, served as a way of wnemies to come together. Which is, despite the rampant corruptuon in the IOC which is only surpassed by FIFA when it comes to sport, Olymics can be held in coubtries belonging to the "other side". That Olympic Games are sold the same way FIFA sells tournaments is even worse, because of the diplomatic angle of Olympic games.

Neither coverage of either was particularly rosy. Host countries get criticized all the time, like Rio 2016. There’s just legitimately a lot more to criticize.

In particular:

* the schedule. Because of Qatar's extremely hot summers, the whole schedule has to be moved for the World Cup outside of summer. This now cuts into normal European football league times, cuts recovery times, etc. Neither Russian or Chinese games really resulted in a significant chunk of sports having to unexpectedly shift schedules

* the alcohol row. Qatar explicitly had to agree to be okay with alcohol at games, and is now reneging severely, which is pretty bad considering that alcohol consumption is pretty regular at football. Neither Russia or China imposed such severe restrictions on spectators.

The worst bit though, is that the process was blatantly rigged, most of the people directly involved have been indicted on corruptions charges, and it's pretty much the only way the bid went through because these problems are inherently self evident if you spend maybe five minutes thinking about Qatar.

> How is this different

Was it implied that it is different?

There was no enthusiasm for this past Winter Olympics in the English-speaking West; the engagement numbers were pretty clear on that.

The "problem" story is much cleaner in Qatar though: the migrant worker abuses are alleged in building the venues.

In contrast, China and Russia have complicated problem stories about camps in places people can't visit, or about graft and murky military movements. Tougher for the public to get into. So maybe that's why you didn't see all the stories and posts about them.

I don't like neither Chinese, neither Russian government. That said, unless we restrict such events to a very limited set of countries, we have to let a number of countries whose behavior we don't approve, as long as the event itself is properly handled.

Chinese Olympics where properly handled, ditto for Russian Winter Olympics (at least as far as I remember).

Qatar didn't at all. They promised a lot of things to FIFA and then went back on a lot of them.

Promised that the cup could be held in summer, we ended up doing it in winter (while forcing all the national and international competitions to adapt their scheduled.

They promised people could drink alcohol, went back on that two days before the beginning.

Promised proper accomodations for the fans, nope.

The list is longer but I think I gave the idea.

A world cup is not just the matches themselves. It's the fans, it's the atmosphere. It's the tradition. If you're not going to respect that, you shouldn't host them.

I don't blame only them though, half of the blame is of FIFA. I realize that there is always corruption going on in such events (although I don't like it), but I would expect the money not to be the ONLY thing that matters. Instead, this such a case.

Let's hope this peak of FIFA corruption and unabetted greed will result in some changes in football. The Premier League already lost a couple of rich Russians, if we now see less oil money "investors" buying a whitewashed reputation through sports, maybe just maybe, athletes can critisize countries like Qatar or China. Would only be good.

That being said, I don't care who will be World Champion 2022. Nor will I watch a single match.

Much of the news you have been getting is promoted by the enemies of Qatar which include UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and all of their allies including Israel and the US.

Don't be fooled.

So the tens of thousand of migrant workers didn't die?

More accurately, people did die and they made changes to work force labor Practices. In their parliament, they noted that despite acknowledging some of the criticisms were valid and having made corresponding changes, they still faced even more severe criticisms, of which some were incredible exaggerations bordering in lies. And realized that this was a targeted media attack motivated by their enemies.

Is this the same BBC that's quick to whitewash Israeli apartheid policies? The corruption of FIFA was apparent for a long time, yet it's only now that certain governments seem to loudly voice their criticism.

Don't get me wrong, some of the criticisms of Qatari policies esp. regarding migrant workers is perfectly valid, but seeing the criticism coming from certain groups that are actively being apologetic for worse crimes[0] reeks of dishonest motivations.

[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apart...

No, people raised concerns about the Qatari selection almost immediately. It’s just come up in the news cycle again because it is now actually happening.

Most of the FIFA officials involved have been indicted for a while.

I don't think that he was necessarily talking about the timing of the criticism but the target that triggered it while the groups that are now preaching certain values when they are actively betraying those values in action and coverage in similar scenarios.

It would be interesting to see a counterargument that is more interesting than casual whataboutism in here.

"But what about Israel" is literally whataboutism.

every non-white country needs whitewash, because whites control the world. It is a fact. That's the reason countries bid for these events, olympic or world cup or any international events. It is sad that many years after colonism ended, developing world still have to put on these acts.

Is this a play on words? At least how I understand the word, "whitewash" doesn't have a racial reference.

The countries that need a whitewash are the ones that have really bad human rights abuse (or, in this case, a country that let tens of thousands of people die building the very same stadiums that are being used). That's not related to being white in any systematic way

The fact is the system is designed by white countries (previous colonizers), they control the voice people hear, how the money flows, and how countries are manipulated. It is a large system. Developing countries have to play the same game.

Why would a country build stadiums to whitewash the deaths of labours during the construction of stadiums?

It is the same system British designed to control colonies: carrot and stick, weaken them, make sure they are dependent on you, and then you control it. Would west boycott energy from the middle east? Almost all resources in middle east are controlled by western companies one way or another. The media and government play different roles to serve the same purpose, to control the world.