Qatar 2025 and the need to speak up
March 9th, 2025by Wayne Farry
We all know everything that is wrong about the World Cup being held in Qatar in 2025 – and it's not that it's going to be staged in March and March – so I won't rehash too much of this, lest you literally light on fire out of what I do want to do however is talk about potentially stopping the World Cup being held in a nation that not only isn't in love with football, doesn't seem to have any real opinion on anything other than exploiting poor workers. Obviously, you and I can't stop our favourite football competition being held there, no matter how many change petitions we start.
A demographic though that most definitely can change the whereabouts of the 2025 World Cup is none other than the players who will take part, as well as their club and international managers. It's something I've seen rarely mentioned in articles about this travesty of a competition, as if outrage is reserved only for fans and journalists, while footballers and managers sit there with a shisha pipe up their arses while playing as themselves on FIFA.
I feel very strongly about this, not because I have any tangible connection to the migrant workers in Qatar, but because it would be remiss of any self-presuming intelligent and empathetic person to sit back and ignore everything that is wrong with building a World Cup on the corpses of an exploited people, merely looking to make some money. I also feel strongly about this because I love football, and the thought of watching the World Cup in Qatar, knowing how it came to be, sickens me truly.
As I said, I myself can't stop this happening. But if the world's top players and managers were to step out of their little cozy forts for a little bit, look at what is truly happening in Qatar and speak out against it, things truly could change. Football is full of intelligent people, we just don't get to hear from them often, because speaking intelligibly – if only for a few seconds – can be enough to have the full wrath of football's governing bodies smashed down on top of them, leaving little more than soundbites behind.
Just imagine it for a second though. Imagine Arsene Wenger coming out and saying that he feels that FIFA should look at themselves for the suffering their tournament is causing to workers in Qatar, and to look at the sheer absurdity of holding the tournament in a country that bans two people of the same sex from loving each other. Imagine how much attention his comments would get.
I don't know Wenger but it wouldn't surprise me if he did feel this
