The World Cup's dark shadow
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said Qatar has hosted the 'best group stage ever' at a World Cup. But what about all of the issues off the field of play casting a large, looming shadow over the tournament?
Host Adam Leventhal is joined by The Athletic’s Deputy Editor Laura Williamson and writers Adam Crafton and Matt Slater to dissect all.
We hear the tragic story of how a Filipino migrant worker died during the group stage at Saudi Arabia’s training resort in Qatar.
The panel also discuss the 'Disney-fication' of the World Cup, LGBTQ+ issues, sportswashing and much, much more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:04.3 | So ahead of this World Cup in Qatar, lots of media, including us here at The Athletic, made a conscious choice to not just talk about football, as the FIFA president, Jenny Infantino, would probably prefer. |
| 0:16.1 | Being here and by looking across social media, lots of people seem to be having a great time in Doha |
| 0:21.9 | and enjoying the football. |
| 0:24.2 | But are they forgetting about the lives lost |
| 0:26.5 | and the freedoms denied to make it so? |
| 0:29.5 | I'm Adam Leventhal and this is the Athletic Football Podcast. |
| 0:34.1 | The politicians, they want to use the sport to promote themselves, to achieve something in |
| 0:40.8 | their agenda, they will not success, definitely, you know, because sport is sports, nothing |
| 0:46.2 | to do with politics and that's what we're doing here in Qatar is just sport and football. |
| 0:51.6 | What is the honest, realistic total, do you think, of migrant workers who died from, as a result, |
| 0:57.0 | of what they're doing for the World Cup in totality? |
| 1:00.0 | The estimate is around 400. |
| 1:02.0 | Between 400 and 500. |
| 1:03.0 | I don't have the exact number. |
| 1:05.0 | Other teams who have experience, they have results in the former tournaments like France, |
| 1:10.0 | like England, they played, like Brazil, they played well in the former tournaments like France, like England. |
| 1:12.1 | They played like Brazil. |
| 1:13.9 | They played well in the first game. |
| 1:18.7 | And the teams as well, who were mentally ready, like Eugen said, |
| 1:24.0 | the mindset to focus on competition and not on political demonstrations. |
| 1:34.7 | So that's just a taste of what has been said as the tournament was starting and at junctures during this tournament. |
... |
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