Will you be watching?

[nudge+]

2 hours ago, Tommy said:

I don't think anyone is on a high horse. It sounds more like those who are going to watch it know that it's wrong, but they don't want to abstain from their "luxurious entertainment" for lack of a better word. 

[Tommy]

6 minutes ago, nudge said:

I've seen that!  I've watched a lot of videos of Fabian Köster (the interviewer) and Lutz van der Horst in the last few days. They're hilarious. 

[Rick]

8 hours ago, Tommy said:

I don't think anyone is on a high horse. It sounds more like those who are going to watch it know that it's wrong, but they don't want to abstain from their "luxurious entertainment" for lack of a better word. 

Did you watch the world cups in Russia, Brazil & South Africa? And if not, was it for the reason you are giving for missing this one? Same question to @nudge

I am not for one second defending Qatar as a country or host. I disagree with the vast majority of everything they do. Just like I disagreed with the World Cup in Brazil where family’s were  ripped from their homes to make way for stadiums. Or the archaic mentality of the Russian regime, or money that South African’s don’t have being spent on a World Cup. ALL of these tournaments have had their fair share of issues, but that’s easy to forget about I suppose when people are trying to stand on their pedestal over this particular tournament. 
 

I am a hypocrite. I hate that people are treat like shit in parts of this world. That being said, I still have a modern iPhone, I still buy clothes that have probably been made dirt cheap and I will still be watching this World Cup. 
 

Also, Nudge, I suspected you may have had a drink when you started calling us all “fuckers”

[6666]

Watching or not watching doesn't mean anything. If people don't want to watch it for whatever reason, that's fine but you don't really get any extra points for that.

13 hours ago, Spike said:

Qatar definitely doesn’t care and boycotting this WC does nothing to address their human’s rights issues.

They have made some reforms regarding workers rights from what I'm told so while they don't necessarily care about the people affected, they still don't like being called out and made to look incompetent.

Also why I never buy the argument of "sports washing". Only gets applied to non-western countries and in reality these countries holding big events only invites further scrutiny of their practices rather than "sports washing" their practices. Change usually comes from interaction rather than complete exclusion like some seem to want.

Still don't think the World Cup should've been held in Qatar but that's more from the perspective of what works best for football rather than any "sports washing" concerns. An extremely hot country with a different and strict culture that other cultures might find difficult to function in isn't the most ideal spot for a world tournament.

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, 6666 said:

Also why I never buy the argument of "sports washing". Only gets applied to non-western countries and in reality these countries holding big events only invites further scrutiny of their practices rather than "sports washing" their practices. Change usually comes from interaction rather than complete exclusion like some seem to want.

That's bollocks tbh. Nazi Germany hosting the Olympics, Argentina hosting the World Cup in 1978, Russia having recently hosted Olympics & a World Cup are all examples of white countries using sport to wash away any negative coverage they've received in western media. I do think more people make a bigger deal out of it when it's non-white countries doing it... but it's only because of people not demanding more morality of sporting authorities like FIFA that this sort of thing continues.

[6666]

1 minute ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

That's bollocks tbh. Nazi Germany hosting the Olympics, Argentina hosting the World Cup in 1978, Russia having recently hosted Olympics & a World Cup are all examples of white countries using sport to wash away any negative coverage they've received in western media. I do think more people make a bigger deal out of it when it's non-white countries doing it... but it's only because of people not demanding more morality of sporting authorities like FIFA that this sort of thing continues.

This idea that negative coverage of politics gets washed away is complete nonsense though. Sports coverage is very much separate from political coverage. No one gets confused by the two. The idea that people might is ridiculous.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, 6666 said:

This idea that negative coverage of politics gets washed away is complete nonsense though. Sports coverage is very much separate from political coverage. No one gets confused by the two. The idea that people might is ridiculous.

If that were the case, sporting events wouldn't be seen as useful propaganda. It might be a ridiculous idea that people confuse the two types of coverage, but they do confuse the types of coverage because people are generally ridiculous.

[nudge+]

14 minutes ago, Rick said:

Did you watch the world cups in Russia, Brazil & South Africa? And if not, was it for the reason you are giving for missing this one? Same question to @nudge

I am not for one second defending Qatar as a country or host. I disagree with the vast majority of everything they do. Just like I disagreed with the World Cup in Brazil where family’s were  ripped from their homes to make way for stadiums. Or the archaic mentality of the Russian regime, or money that South African’s don’t have being spent on a World Cup. ALL of these tournaments have had their fair share of issues, but that’s easy to forget about I suppose when people are trying to stand on their pedestal over this particular tournament. 
 

I am a hypocrite. I hate that people are treat like shit in parts of this world. That being said, I still have a modern iPhone, I still buy clothes that have probably been made dirt cheap and I will still be watching this World Cup. 
 

Also, Nudge, I suspected you may have had a drink when you started calling us all “fuckers”

Kinda answered that earlier in this very same thread...  

On 13/11/2022 at 17:29, nudge said:

For me, this World Cup in Qatar and all the issues associated with it are a continuation of the sad state of modern football rather than a single one-off issue. My interest in football has dwindled dramatically in recent years as a result of ever increasing commercialisation, corruption, sportswashing, greed and hypocrisy, so the decision not to watch it was really easy and a no brainer for me, considering that I already had little to none interest in several previous World Cups and Euro Cups, haven't bought a single piece of merchandise, and haven't watched a single match in the Champions League, Europa League, or any of the top leagues outside Bundesliga for probably a decade. 

Also as I said yesterday, I do not consider myself to be a morally right person in the first place, so all this "high horse" stuff really couldn't be more wrong, or at least it wasn't the intention. I don't even mind or care about others watching it (as I said several times before), and I don't expect everyone to care about every issue on the planet either, but it just generally irks and triggers me sometimes when people's words do not match their actions at all. We might all be hypocrites to a certain degree, but surely you have to draw the line somewhere and have some principles... Much rather prefer someone being honest and admitting that they don't care enough about something to change their habits and behaviour to having people cry about how wrong or bad something is just to turn around and continue to support the very same thing through their lifestyle choices. 

And yeah, yesterday night was strange Shouldn't move from Bloody Maries to Martinis and then to beer, probably... 

[Bluewolf]

7 minutes ago, nudge said:

Shouldn't move from Bloody Maries to Martinis and then to beer, probably... 

@nudge is probably the only person I know that can be bitten by a mosquito and then the mosquito has to book itself straight into the Betty Ford clinic afterwards... 

[Dr. Gonzo]

12 minutes ago, nudge said:

Shouldn't move from Bloody Maries to Martinis and then to beer, probably... 

Nah fuck that keep doing it

[nudge+]

Just now, Dr. Gonzo said:

Nah fuck that keep doing it

It's official, Gonzo wants me dead  

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

It's official, Gonzo wants me dead  

Nah just drunk as fuck

[Azeem]

At least this thread is bringing some hype for the WC

[Tommy]

On top of that nudge said, the other countries had at least somewhat of a football culture, and they didn't interrupt an ongoing season and move the shit into the winter. 

[6666]

20 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If that were the case, sporting events wouldn't be seen as useful propaganda. It might be a ridiculous idea that people confuse the two types of coverage, but they do confuse the types of coverage because people are generally ridiculous.

If that's the case, then it sounds like these people are the issue and they should be challenged on why they're so fucking stupid.

I don't buy into many of these people existing though. A lot of people are ridiculous but the main debate seems to be between "I'm not watching because on this occasion I care about the politics of the country the tournament is held in" vs. "I'm watching because it's the World Cup, it's not about politics for me".

Only people conflating the politics and the sport are the people that aren't gonna be watching it. People that want to watch are very much keeping things separate.

If the Qatari government want the sports washing affect, it's not gonna work.

Reality is that if the World Cup wasn't happening in Qatar, there would be less criticism of them. And once it ends, the criticism they are receiving will disappear because the spotlight won't be on them anymore and the people that where criticising them will stop caring as it's no longer a hot topic.

If FIFA want to do the right thing then they should put the tournament in countries that need the most criticism. Otherwise people won't care. Has to be a country in Asia for that plan to work though.

[Azeem]

1 minute ago, Tommy said:

On top of that nudge said, the other countries had at least somewhat of a football culture, and they didn't interrupt an ongoing season and move the shit into the winter. 

Same. Qatar initially promised to have air conditioned stadiums but back tracked on that. 

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

2 minutes ago, 6666 said:

If FIFA want to do the right thing then they should put the tournament in countries that need the most criticism.

Good thing they've gone with the country that's supported the most unrest in the world and been at war for most of it's time as a country for the next host then!

But seriously, I think you're putting waaaaaaaaaay too much faith in the intelligence of people. If sportswashing didn't work, it wouldn't be prevalent in basically every sport that has big money behind it... and it wouldn't be something that has been around for such a long time. Hell, I don't even think there would be international tournaments if not for goverments finding promoting nationalism to be something useful for them...

[Dr. Gonzo]

8 minutes ago, Tommy said:

On top of that nudge said, the other countries had at least somewhat of a football culture, and they didn't interrupt an ongoing season and move the shit into the winter. 

Tbh I agree that the timing of this world cup is irritating as fuck - but I fully admit to having a Eurocentric bias and not caring about international football interrupting other leagues around the world... which I know with many countries outside of Europe, the World Cup does stop their season. There are Middle Eastern countries that do have a football culture... but I don't think anyone wants to see a world cup hosted in Iran (because that's sportswashing for an even worse government than Qatars, I dunno who's worse Qatar this year or Argentina in 1978... but letting the Islamic Republic host in 2022 would be shambolic even for FIFA), or Iraq (because they're still recovering from the US fucking with them and then ISIS running wild - I don't think they can guarantee safety).

But if it was a country in the Middle East that was safe to get to and had a longstanding football culture... they'd probably still have to interrupt Europe's football season to make sure no venues are going to kill any potential players or fans. And I don't know how I feel about that.

On the one hand it's fucked to tell a part of the world they can never host a world cup. On the other hand, it's fucking weird to have rearranged football's longstanding calendar and it's been annoying and it's going to take years for football, even at the club level, I think to properly recover from what moving things around has done.

[6666]

15 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Good thing they've gone with the country that's supported the most unrest in the world and been at war for most of it's time as a country for the next host then!

They're not Asian countries so it won't work. Sports and politics will be viewed separately. Should've picked China or our great allies Saudi Arabia.

[Stan]

36 minutes ago, Beelzebub said:

At least this thread is bringing some hype for the WC

And creating activity in a topic they hate. A perfect storm

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, 6666 said:

They're not Asian countries so it won't work. Should've picked China or our great allies Saudi Arabia.

China as a world cup host in 2022 would have been hilarious tbh. With their "zero covid" policy, no fans would really be able to move between cities hosting the games because of the mandatory lockdown (oh and everyone flying in would need to fly in 2 weeks ahead of time so they can get their quarantine time in Beijing out of the way). Couple that with the average Chinese person's indifference to their national team (I got to watch Iran play China in the AFC Asian Cup while I was in Beijing, in a bar full of Chinese people and as far as I could tell none of them really gave a fuck and they all expected to lose - a lot of them think their national team is a joke and a disgrace). Even their club football is barely followed, despite the huge amounts of money that went into growing their football.

So it'd be a host nation with even less of a football culture than Qatar, with even less of a chance to see stadiums close to full in the matches.

But let's be honest, nobody really gave a fuck about China's many human rights abuses the last time they hosted an Olympics. Maybe that's because China holds a lot of the west by the balls with it's economic power, maybe not.

I honestly doubt anyone would say anything about Saudi Arabia hosting it. Saudi Arabia hosts F1 races, WWE, created a breakaway golf league, bought Newcastle, own a ton of companies that are used on a day to day basis... they're actually a great case of how sportwashing works. Yeah they get some criticism but mostly nobody gives a shit about what they do.

[Coma+]

20 hours ago, Danny said:

Is it? The World Cup is happening regardless, the stadiums are being filled regardless

Are the stadiums being filled?  All this stuff on social media about paying Pakistani's to parade around town as fans makes me wonder what is really going on.

[Stan]

13 minutes ago, Coma said:

Are the stadiums being filled?  All this stuff on social media about paying Pakistani's to parade around town as fans makes me wonder what is really going on.

They've paid fans to fill the stadiums. So the stadiums will be filled. 

[6666]

32 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I honestly doubt anyone would say anything about Saudi Arabia hosting it. Saudi Arabia hosts F1 races, WWE, created a breakaway golf league, bought Newcastle, own a ton of companies that are used on a day to day basis... they're actually a great case of how sportwashing works. Yeah they get some criticism but mostly nobody gives a shit about what they do.

I mean, that's not true. They got plenty of attention on their shit while doing all those things. It might be evolving into a separation of sport and politics (which isn't a bad thing) because people become used to events taking place but it definitely isn't washing away the negative opinions people had about a lot of Saudi's laws and their behaviour on the international scene.

[Dr. Gonzo]

7 minutes ago, 6666 said:

I mean, that's not true. They got plenty of attention on their shit while doing all those things. It might be evolving into a separation of sport and politics (which isn't a bad thing) because people become used to events taking place but it definitely isn't washing away the negative opinions people had about a lot of Saudi's laws and their behaviour on the international scene.

It absolutely is true. They get some criticism and then they pay the right people and it all goes away and people stop caring. Honestly given their investments in media and social media & the beef they had with Qatar over the past few years - maybe that's why people seem to give far more of a fuck Qatar than them, despite being a much worse government overall.

They'll never not get criticised and that's not their goal. Their goal is to make enough people so that the tide of public opinion isn't against them - and there's no way you can say with a straight face that the tide of general people against Saudi Arabia has turned.