For the first time in my adult life (I am nearly 80), this year I will not engage in any way with the World Cup. The event is nearly always a showcase for the diversity of football played around the world, and a celebration of human difference and unity. This version cannot be that, given the abhorrent context in which it has been manipulated, and the human cost.
There will be 64 games played, perhaps averaging about 100 minutes per game, or roughly 6,400 minutes. Since 2010, including during the construction of the eight stadiums, more than 6,000 migrant workers are reported to have died. That amounts to roughly one migrant worker death for every minute of football played. Every minute will be a funeral lament for a worker who was forced (by circumstance or negligence and brutal greed) to sacrifice their life.
How anyone can participate in such a long funeral (and have fun doing so) is a statement of how inhumane society has become. Football’s showcase has become a perversion in which human life is fodder for the propaganda machines of equally perverse states.
Marcus Cornelius
Dos Hermanas, Spain
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