There is no peace for i Qatar 2022 World Cup, with the umpteenth scandal to disturb the eve of the world cup starting this Sunday. And the opening match ended up in the storm, that is Qatar-Ecuador.
“Qatar has corrupted Ecuador”
The match that will be played at 5 pm on Sunday 20 November could, and the conditional is a must in this whole story, be spoiled by an attempted bribery. It all starts with a tweet written by this Amjad Tahaapparently director of the British Middle East Center for Studies and Research and boasting more than 430,000 followers on Elon Musk’s social network. We report the content of the twitter: “Exclusive: Qatar bribed eight Ecuadorian players with 7.4 million dollars to make them lose the first half (1-0 in the 2nd half). This was confirmed by five officials from Qatar and Ecadour . Let’s hope it’s fake. Hopefully sharing this will influence the outcome. The world should oppose the corruption of FIFA.”
A tweet that must be verified as well as the indiscretion, which actually seems enormous (even if we are no longer surprised by anything seen scandals and controversies tape of this tormented edition of the World Cup). Therefore, Qatar would have, and we reiterate the conditional, offered a bribe to some Ecuadorian players in order to make a good impression in the opening match, knowing that they do not have a leading national team in world football.
Doubts about the indiscretion: a potential hoax
The tweet also reveals apodictic tones: there is no mention of an attempt at corruption, but an already committed crime. The match should end 1-0 with goals from the hosts in the second half: although match-fixing is a serious and real problem, at the moment we have no confirmation or otherwise of this alleged act of corruption, and who knows if we will have any. Also because we must first of all understand whether it is above all a fake news artfully disclosed, precisely considering the peremptory and all too sure tones of this Taha’s tweet.
And among the comments on Twitter we actually find a possible key to understanding this controversy. In fact, writes Ramun Jash: “It is not surprising that all this is emerging in the present moment. Many PR players in the Gulf have aligned themselves with the aim of creating negative publicity around this world cup and tarnishing Qatar. As a public relations professional, it’s not hard to understand this. I am not saying that Qatar was right or wrong with its actions in the past. But certain news that is coming out these days seems like an agenda to wreak havoc around this tournament. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, all aligned with this vision. And I’m not even from that region.” Difficult to blame this reconstruction, much more reasonable than certain cloying conspiracy theories.
The comments in Italy: the ironies on the repechage
In Italy someone could even dream of a repechage by the national team (spoiler: it won’t happen, not even if the indiscretion of the attempted bribery were true), but in general the comments that are circulating are still very critical of the World Cup which, either due to the fact that we won’t be there, but above all you want the original sin of having compressed and interrupted the Serie A season, they are certainly not loved.
“I’m almost happy that Italy won’t participate in this World Cup, with all those deaths building stadiums and this news that has nothing to do with sport!” Giovanni Carpentieri wrote on Facebook. “This is not a World Cup, it’s a farce, let’s forget about human rights and the context, but today money is worth more than logic”, adds Massimo Agosta. Space then for irony: “If they disqualify Qatar and bring Italy back, we’ll make Holland’s journey even easier”, “When it is said that ‘not all bad comes to silver’. The Italian national team will be strong again and we have seen it against Albania“; and finally, the ferocious comment: “This World Cup will overtake the Korean one in the ranking of the most fake in history”.