Qatar

It is strange really; the whole “The Shirt” project started with Bjorn Heidenstrom, the Bold, Bald, Man of the North”, cycling from Norway to South Africa for the World Cup in 2010. Everything that the project has done since and will do in the future started off with that journey.

Literally at the very moment I write this, my beloved Spain are playing Costa Rica in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Amazingly, I have zero interest. Between politicians, the higher echelons of FIFA, Big Business, the candidacies of Russia and Qatar a huge dark cloud floats above the 2022 competition. The tiny state should never have been awarded the competition and since that fateful day when Mr Corruption himself, Sepp Blatter, pulled the name out of the envelope ….. to everyone’s amazement ….. nothing I have seen tells me that it was anything but a wrong decision. Now in Qatar we have farcical decisions in the fanzone, a ban on alcohol for a competition sponsored by Budweiser, huge arguments about the whole LGBTQ+ debate, stadiums far from full but “official attendances” massively inflated etc etc etc …

I will leave it there, I could get annoyed. I am not going to tilt and windmills. I will merely say that I hope football wins. I doubt it will but I can but hope.