Neil Humphreys: For football's sake, take 2022 World Cup off Qatar
Let's hope Platini's arrest leads to more revelations on the issue
Even the Kardashians can't keep up with British bookmakers when it comes to self-promotion.
Within hours of Michel Platini's arrest on Tuesday, the bookies slashed the odds of Qatar being stripped of the 2022 World Cup.
Football is supposedly coming home. The odds of England 2022 happening have dropped from 10-1 to 6-1.
British bookies are masters of their own media, but that doesn't mean they are entirely wrong.
Platini's arrest drags the venal Qatar 2022 back into the spotlight and, at the very least, offers a vague hope of a venue switch (unlikely, but let's cling to whatever slithers of idealism remain).
The Frenchman's tawdry tale is back in the news, which must be deeply unpalatable for Platini, Fifa and the Qatari organisers, because it's a bad case of bile, reminding us yet again just how much we've had to swallow since that infamous lunch in Paris nine years ago.
On Nov 23, 2010, the then-Uefa president Platini dined with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the current Emir of Qatar.
Before the lunch, Platini had professed an interest in the United States hosting the 2022 tournament. After the lunch, Platini pledged his support for the Qataris, reportedly at the urging of Sarkozy.
Both men still can't get their story straight.
Sarkozy insists he lacked the power to persuade Platini - despite being his head of state - and Platini insists he was going to vote for Qatar anyway (despite his earlier support for the US).
What is indisputable is what happened next.
Qatar won the vote.
Six months later, Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) bought Paris Saint-Germain, later adding Neymar and Kylian Mbappe and winning six Ligue 1 titles along the way, effectively turning French football into a one-club farce.
The Qatari broadcaster beIN also purchased the TV rights for Ligue 1. The beIN chairman, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, happens to be QSI chairman and president of PSG.
And in 2012, in a plot twist that would test the boundaries of plausibility in a crime thriller, the Qatar sportswear company Burrda, also owned by QSI, hired a new chief executive - Platini's son, Laurent.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST?
Platini has always denied a conflict of interest. So let's give the Frenchman - currently banned from football for a payment of two million Swiss francs (S$2.7m) received from Fifa in 2011 - the benefit of the doubt.
Just for a moment.
Perhaps awarding the World Cup to a country considered a "high operational risk" that failed to meet the most basic criteria (a tolerable climate, football stadiums and a population that actually cared) was a smart example of statecraft.
Geopolitics won the day.
The French economy got a timely bump and the Qataris pulled off an international public relations coup, going where no Middle Eastern nation had gone before (as long as the PR coup didn't focus on the kafala system of migrant worker abuse, with too many dying as they built the gleaming stadia).
Globalised wealth and exploitation are often easy bedfellows in geopolitics.
Gary Lineker tweeted that Platini's arrest was the "saddest" because he was "one of us", a former professional footballer.
But such remarks could be accused of being either naive or hypocritical.
Neymar and Mbappe are professional footballers, just as Lineker and Platini once were.
Both directly benefit from Qatar's omnipresence in elite football. Both play for PSG, arguably, because of that lunch between Platini, Sarkozy and the Qatari leaders.
Obviously, Neymar and Mbappe have never been accused of corruption. But equally, it's too simplistic to write off Qatar 2022 as an isolated example of oligarchs buying international prestige and power when the distribution of petrodollars is spread so widely.
As expected, British phone-in shows have criticised the Qatari money that "bought" the World Cup and demanded a venue switch to England, where Qatari money also bought the 2012 Olympic Village, among other famous British properties.
The influence of oil-rich nations across everything from property to elite sport is as awkward as it is complicated. So let's keep it simple and stick to football.
Qatar 2022 shouldn't happen for football reasons.
There have been nine years of investigations and Qatar 2022 has survived. But the timing of Platini's arrest is interesting.
If more revelations follow from this probe, then momentum will build. Developments in France may be the beginning of the end for Qatar.
It's a long shot.
But any and all hope is welcome as we stumble towards a grotesque football tournament that has never even pretended to be about the football.
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