I’m not a massive football fan although I take a passing interest in the performance of the Home Nations teams and I might look in to the FA Cup final. I might normally watch the England team in the Euros or the World Cup in normal times, but these are not normal times. Part of the reason for this lack of normality is a country, Qatar, with no great footballing history and which has a climate that makes the playing of football in the summer impossible is hosting the tournament. How it got the contest, there have been allegations of corruption swirling around this World Cup, more than usual allegations, along with the use of labourers who built the stadia treated like medieval serfs, has tainted this World Cup for many.

To be quite frank. This year’s World Cup is looking distinctly like a bit of a shit show. There’s been Sharia bans on beer for the supporters in Qatar and a great many moans about the intrusive data collection apps that the Qatari government is forcing fans to have to access certain facilities such as local healthcare services. Then of course there was the absolute destruction of the virtue signalling of the England Team and the English football establishment over the kneeling issue and because the team decided that making a political point by wearing LGBT themed armbands, was worth less than getting paid. We’ve seen in real time with the behaviour of the England management just how shallow the foundations are of the team’s virtue signalling. At the first sign that this sort of virtue signalling might earn the players a booking or impede the flow of cash, the England management do a 180 on them. Money, it seems, talks louder than virtue signalling.

There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm back home in the UK either. Normally where I am England team merchandise would be flying off of the shelves and cars would be adorned with lots of St George’s flags. I’m seeing very very little of this associated with this World Cup. The flags seem to be staying firmly on the shelves in the supermarket and I suspect that it will not be long before I see them in the remainder bin very soon, along with unsold copies of Prince Harry’s latest book. I’m not seeing blokes staggering out of my local Tesco with bulk packs of beer and neither am I hearing from my child that World Cup Fever has erupted in his school. The atmosphere around this World Cup is extremely muted.

Part of this must be down to worries about the economy with people unwilling or unable to spend hard earned money on beer or plastic England themed tat. But I suspect that much of the lack of enthusiasm goes far beyond the economy. The movement of what is traditionally a contest that takes place in the summer because the Qataris insisted it should be held in their colder months has messed up a lot of Northern European league contests and some people are obviously pissed off about that. Then there’s the location for this World Cup, a Shariah shithole. That’s not gone down well with fans as countries such as Qatar cannot provide the sort of atmosphere that travelling fans might be used to. It’s a case of no pubs, no fan zones with beer and no real World Cup atmosphere on the ground which will possibly reflect on the enthusiasm of those who might be expected to watch the games on TV. Even if I was a dedicated football fan I would not have been bothered to buy a ticket to travel to a game in a country where the fans are without a doubt going to be treated like shitty infidels by Qatari authorities.

When you add in all these problems plus the distraction of the England management’s woke virtue signalling then you have the perfect recipe for a World Cup that has all the enthusiastic buoyancy of a balloon filled with Xenon. I’m not massively enthusiastic about this World Cup and it seems that there are others who feel the same way. I would normally care about how England are doing in a big contest like this but now I can’t even care if they come home early having been kicked out by a better team. The World Cup has been held in some truly horrible and nasty places, such as pre-democratic Argentina for example, but even then from reading various news reports on the contest, you could pick up on a large amount of enthusiasm for the tournament both from Argentines and from those from other nations. I’m not getting the impression that this is the same for this year’s WC. I suspect that when it is over there will be a lot of recriminations and pointed questions about how Qatar not only got the contest but also managed to call the shots on timing and scheduling. These questions and recriminations can’t in my come soon enough.