As Cristiano Ronaldo scored his third goal for Portugal against Spain, he must have known he would be covering back pages across the globe – and front pages back home.
Ronaldo’s hat-trick was not the only story that emerged about the Portugal star on Friday. Just hours before he took the field in Sochi, it was confirmed he had agreed to a $21.8m (€18.8m) fine and suspended jail term to settle tax evasion charges. While there was nothing to suggest Ronaldo masterminded the timing of the news, no prizes for guessing which story got top billing.
In the World Cup, it’s often said, “the world is watching”. But for countries seeking to bury controversial news or unpopular policies, another way to put it is that the world is looking the other way.
A number of nations at the World Cup have made announcements that would usually bring condemnation, either at home or internationally, to coincide with kick-offs in Russia.
As Russia celebrated their first game, for example, news broke that the Kremlin was planning to increase the national retirement age by five years, to 65 for men and 63 for women. Prime minister Dmitry Medvedev also announced a 2% raise in VAT. He said he expected parliament to vote on both measures before summer recess, meaning that, if approved, they would become law before the World Cup is over.
The increases are extremely unpopular but on Friday major newspapers led on the 5-0 win over Saudi Arabia.
As many of that country’s leaders sat watching in Moscow, Saudi-led coalition forces embarked on one of the biggest offensives in Yemen since war there began in 2015. The troops have pushed to seize the airport in Yemen’s main port city, through which the majority of food and medical supplies arrive. The United Nations is concerned this latest attack will worsen famine, putting millions of lives in peril.
On Friday lunchtime, focus turned to Iran. They scored a late goal against Morocco, for a first World Cup win in 20 years. A day before the game, the country’s leading female human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was arrested. She was denied any due process: officials told her she had been convicted at a trial in her absence and sentenced to five years in prison.
Sotoudeh has defended Iranians arrested for protesting, for refusing to wear a hijab, and for offences committed when they were children. This will be her second spell in prison, having been sentenced to 11 years for defending protesters in the anti-government Persian spring. While in prison she went on hunger strike, her longest spell lasting 49 days. She was released after six years and became one of the most recognised faces of the Iranian human rights movement.
