No need, their bid is already being considered. 
Have any TAN members actually gone to Qatar?
If there is anyone out there can you do me a big favour and bring something back for me?
1 Like
Thank you for the valuable perspective you bring, as a woman, a Muslim, a passionate red and someone who used to live in Qatar.
Hang in there on this one! People are pissed off with some of the Qatar policies, in particular what has happened to migrant workers, and also LGBTQ rights.
But it doesnât seem right for us to conflate public policy with the wishes of the average Qatari citizen. Iâm pretty sure Qatar will evolve socially in its own good time, as other nations have.
In the UK we were prosecuting and chemically castrating homosexuals in the 1950s, as the disgraceful treatment meted out to Alan Turing shows. He saved many thousands of lives in World War Two, and was a genius mathematician who invented an early form of the computer.
My hope is that exposure to other countries and cultures is a catalyst for Qatar in that journey.
And I echo your sadness in that people are falling out over this.
8 Likes
Righto itâs time to get the football going and Iâm hoping for some cracking matches ahead.
Plenty of Qatar points have been made and hypocrisy exposed everywhere and Iâm glad matches are finally underway to shift the focus to hopefully something positive.
Another Qatar fact - the team is shite.
2 Likes
Are you saying trans or gay people should just suck it up and stay home because theyâre not the same as the rest of us? I mean⌠what if they really love the world cup? Itâs every 4 years, not every other weekend.
âJust stay home, youâre different than the rest of us, others will have fun!â is a fucking terrible take.
4 Likes
The Qatar Football team are amazing! They just need to work on their short & long passing, shooting, movement off the ball, positioning, crossing, decision-making, set pieces, man-marking, dribbling, fitness, ball control, tackling, counter-attacking, overlapping, running, blocking & scoring goals. They get this right, they can beat anyone.
2 Likes
SoâŚ
Youâre saying the keeper did well 
Iâve played better than that keeper and conceded far more anyone even sure he is a keeper.
This will be my last post on the topic. Thank you @RedOverTheWater. I agree with you said.
I think understand me and what i am trying to say. I like to think I am a Liberal minded person.
In my previous posts, I have said it all along, the World Cup should have never been held in Qatar for all the football and non footballing reasons many people have mentioned. I support LBGTQ rights, personally i hate Sharia law, I think the law needs abolition (unlikely) or reformation to be in tune with 21st century and I have gone on and said my views in the faces to ultra-orthodox muslims and they didnât like it.
What is happening in Iran right now really upsets me. I canât change the whole mindset in one day. The other Gulf countries didnât want Qatar to have the World Cup, out of envy and didnât want Qatar becoming too prominent on the world stage , especially Saudi Arabia, (they like to control the narrative in gulf politics).
As you said, over time, things will change hopefully.
I am not a sportswasher, I sometimes believe there are double standards in the West when it comes to the Middle East.
Anyway, back to the football.
12 Likes
I love all thar cheesy music, songs and dancing and the fireworks.
I agree with most of this to be honest, but for clarityâŚ
âPeople are pissed off with some Qatar policiesâ
Well, yesâŚ
But also with FIFA, and every nation that has attended. Giving platitudes and and allowing migrant workers train with them isnât a stance. Its patronising twee nonsense. When the evidence of what was happening to migrant workers came to light this should have been pulled.
I always thought that one western nation would pull out. But money rules and corruption continues.
You hear the Infantino speech and the treatment is just compounded.
Today Harry Kane can make a difference by taking a stand. He most likely wont.
I am tired of being advised to just watch the football, sport and politics donât mix etc.
But they do. This puece of abhorrent shite could and should have been used as a vehicle to right a few global wrongs.
I think its tragic and honestly depressing to see what is happening.
Re Alan TuringâŚthe 1950s was 70 years agoâŚ
Life has improved somewhat, but really not enough.
@Maria and @RedOverTheWater
Unfortunately people will fall out over this.
3 Likes
Iâve just been reading through this thread and can I just say that the personal abuse aimed at @maria is completely out of order. By all means you can disagree with what she is saying but not only is she entitled to express her views without fear of abuse she is one of the few posters here with first hand experience of what ordinary Qataris are like rather than some perception gained on the basis of the perception of their government.
All nations will want to create a favourable impression of their country. This was true of the London 2012 Olympics. It is also true of the last World Cup and the ultimate in sports-washing, the 1936 Olympics. All I can say so far with Qatar is that they appear to be making a hash of it.
Anyway, back to the football. Any thoughts on the USA vs Wales match. I suspect itâs going to be tight, probably a draw although I really want to see Wales progress in this. Itâs an essential game for them.
9 Likes
I am okay, we all are abit emotional, I have said stuff in the past i shouldnât have said and was in the TIA jail for a few days once 
.
I have learned from other posters on here and it made think about topics in other ways. So, all is good.
PaulRoJo, everything is cool with me from my end. 
2 Likes
Interesting bit that I just noticed on Google. âWin probabilityâ. They give the following odds on todayâs games:
England 72% Iran 8% Draw 20%
USA 40%, Wales 29%, Draw 31%
Senegal 17%, Netherlands 57%, Draw 26%
Iâm not sure how they work these out? Do they simulate them on computer or do they just look at the betting odds?
We have a winner ⌠
As a betting man I do believe its just based on taking the medium when looking at odds from multiple bookies as much as theyll tell you otherwise.
Whenever Iâve seen the win % on google its usually in line with what the bookies have it as.
1 Like
Most interestingly for me is the real reason Qatar put so much into âbuyingâ the World Cup. It was actually much more than a vainglorious attempt to announce themselves on the world stage , and it also wasnât strictly a matter of sportswashing their reputation.
I gave a link earlier which touches upon it , but basically hereâs how it goes. Cast your mind back to 2017 when the Saudis decided they were going to embargo the tiny state which was once just scrubland at their eastern extremity and which they considered little more than a vassal state. Incredibly the US (who had a crucial military base there) joined along in this little enterprise with an apparent insouciance which could only possibly be explained by the $2bn the Saudis palmed off to Jared Kushner to rescue his ailing appartment block in Manhattan.
The Saudis branded Qatar as âsupporters of terrorismâ on the basis that they tolerated the Muslim Brotherhood and because they didnât like Al Jazeeraâs reporting , and made demands that to break the embargo would have effectively ended their sovereignty as an independent state. This posed a very real existential threat to the state itself. Itâs not hard to imagine how this could have ended in war , but luckily sense prevailed , and the UK led the way by breaking the embargo.
"For small states like Qatar, their greatest hurdle is invisibility and survival, and they tend to be linked. The World Cup is really about, first and foremost, showcasing Qatarâs sovereign independence and separating itself symbolically from Saudi Arabia.Long-term, it doesnât matter if the world has a negative perspective of Qatar now. Behind the scenes, this event is going to do so many things for the country that it couldnât have done without it.â (Paul Michael Brannagan, an international relations scholar who has co-authored a book on the 2022 World Cup.)
So , for geopolitical considerations alone , Iâm kinda willing to give a Qatar a pass on that.
If that would have been the end of it , well fair enough ⌠but it wasnât though. That lunch at the ElysĂŠe Palace back in 2010 between Sarkozy , Platini and the Crown Prince wasnât just about stitching up the World Cup between them. Also on the agenda that day was the purchase of Paris St.Germain (Sarkozyâs team) and the launching of a new media sports empire , Bein Sports. Both things came to pass shortly afterwards.
For me , those last two things have been far more consequential , and more damaging , for football in general than the simple awarding of an already corrupt , and increasingly meaningless , competition to a tiny nation state , and for that the Qataris are entirely culpable.
7 Likes
Such an ignorant statement. Politics and sports have been intertwined for millennia starting from the Ancient Olympics when warring city states would normally seize hostilities for the duration of the Games.
There are a myriad of examples in football. Fascist Italy naturalized 2 Argentinians and 2 Uruguayans overnight to help deliver the trophy in 1934. Austriaâs wunderteam was destroyed a few years later with the Anschluss with several of its players featuring for Nazi Germany in 1938. FIFA awarded the 1978 WC to Argentinaâs brutal dictatorship which was used to sportwash its crimes. In Eastern Block countries, there were clubs affiliated with state apparatuses such as Dynamo Dresden in East Germany, Steaua and Dinamo Bucharest in Romania. Even more recently Olympiacos in Greece. There was even an armed conflict between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 which was labelled as the âFootball Warâ.
12 Likes