This is the Guardian.

Today, after all the controversy, four conversations about this year's World Cup in Qatar.

It's been 12 years in the making, but on Sunday, he and Doha, the World Cup is finally going to kick off.

It's the biggest sporting event in the world, maybe the biggest event period.

And there's a real buzz in the city.

You can see the flags of 32 countries involved in the tournament everywhere.

The World Cup logo is on the side of buildings, there's huge pictures of players, roads are closed, there's messages being beamed in lights into the sky.

And people everywhere, it feels like Doha, this usually very sleepy city, is bracing itself for what's ahead.

And what's striking about the atmosphere here is that it's so different to the way the tournament is being talked about in Europe, in the UK and elsewhere.

Where the focus has been on the controversies around workers' rights, LGBTQ issues, and just a feeling that an event that people really love has come to symbolise a lot of the things that they don't like about the world.

And some are questioning how they should engage with this year's tournament if it's even right to enjoy it.

Over the past week, as I've been preparing to come here, I've been trying to grapple with some of those questions and talking to experts, to fans, and to guitarists to try to get to the bottom of it.

From the Guardian in Doha, I'm Michael Safi, today in focus, what really matters about this year's World Cup?

Hey, Kirstie, can you hear me? Hi, yes I can, yeah. How's it going? Okay, great.

Kirstie Payne and her husband live in a small town near Bristol and southwest England.

They're really big football fans, and going to the World Cup is one of their traditions.

But this year, she said the decision whether to go to Qatar was one they really struggled with.

We have umdenard, and we have had a moral dilemma about it because of the human rights issues of the women's rights issues, of the migrant worker, problems that they've had and the people that have died in the run-up to this.

It really has bothered us somewhat. Now, ordinarily, we're really well organised, we're booked way in advance.

We have canvased lots of friends and colleagues and peers about this, and we've had a very mixed response from people about what to do.

Can you take me through firstly your relationship with the World Cup? How many of these tournaments have you been to over the course of your life?

Well, been to many, many World Cups and European tournaments, and sport in general to be honest, we both love sport, we do travel around the world to watch sport, horse racing, cricket, rugby, and football is a huge, huge thing for us.

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