No one even remotely informed about football was surprised by the choice of Saudi Arabia as host of the 2036 World Cup.
The president of FIFA, the Swiss-Italian Gianni Infantino, learned from the scandal that threw so many hats into the dustbin of history, starting with his predecessor Joseph Blatter, as well as João Havelange, Ricardo Teixeira, José Maria Marin, Marco Polo Del Nero, to mention just the Brazilian quartet and spare the rare reader a dozen names of former presidents of Conmebol and national federations on the American continent, as well as executives from major television networks and executives from sports marketing companies, some already dead.
The choice of Qatar, even before FIFAgate, allowed Infantino to live a nabobesque life, like a true sheikh, a guest with his entire family in Doha, more than a year before the World Cup started.
Returning to the Middle East became the top hat’s dream, in addition to being married to a Lebanese woman.
But how, if North America claimed to win the World Cup, if South America always puts pressure on and Africa wanted to repeat the 2010 experience?
There were many candidates in line before the oil owners could return to the spotlight.
Then, the light dawned on Infantino’s brilliant head and he proved to be a formidable track clearer.
One World Cup, the next one, in 2026, in Canada, Mexico and the United States and a rabbit is killed with one stone in three countries.
That left South America, Europe and Africa.
The Arabs are in a hurry, have a lot of money and no democracy.
So let the most dizzying and absurd of the World Cups be held on three continents at the same time to contemplate the candidates: in 2030, three games to open the tournament, in Uruguay, to celebrate the first century of the cup, in Argentina, country of the current three-time champions worldwide and in Paraguay, because…, why? Oh yes, because the president of Conmebol is Paraguayan and the entity’s headquarters are there, close to Asunción.
Once the World Cup has opened, it will continue in Portugal, Spain and Morocco.
Ready! The way is open for Saudi Arabia, the country of slave labor, where homosexuality is a crime, women were only allowed to attend stadiums four years ago and the crown prince and prime minister Mohammad bin Salman is a sweet person, so much so that he ordered kill and dismember journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who opposed him, inside the Saudi embassy in Ankara, Turkey.
Sweet and generous, as Jair Bolsonaro can testify, he received so many jewels from the monarch.
Imagine what he won’t be able to do to make Infantino and his friends happy without having to take a penny from nebulous commissions, as was the old practice of those who supported the powerful transnational football company.
The Saudis say it will be their opportunity to show themselves to the world as they really are. Don’t doubt it.
For a month, they will show and make the World Cup as impressive or even more impressive than the one in Qatar.
The Qataris said the same, they delivered the job perfectly, albeit with an embarrassing and tacky artificiality, and returned to darkness as soon as the World Cup was over.
Very different from what happened in post-Franco Spain, in 1982, and unified Germany, in 2006.
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