In Qatar, To Be Or Not To Be?

From The Independent a discourse on Liverpool, the Club World Cup and the ramifications of a potential boycott over moral concerns ahead of the World Club championship in Qatar.

By Miguel Delaney

As the Liverpool players gather on the Khalifa International Stadium pitch in Qatar on Wednesday, it will be impossible for them not to look up the impressive scale of the venue... but it should be even more difficult not to consider something else.

If you look at a certain spot in the structure, it is where worker Zachary Cox fell head-first 130 feet to his death in 2017, after an “inherently unsafe” hoist had snapped.

Veronica Hamilton-Deeley – the coroner at the inquest – ruled that was because “workers were being asked to use equipment that was not fit for purpose”, with one key factor the decision to speed up the building of the stadium’s roof.

Cox’s tragic fall was both the only death suffered by a westerner and the only death that actually took place inside a stadium in the construction work for Qatar 2022, but that in turn should put even more focus on the fatalities of so many migrant workers where the details are scandalously scarce. A further tragedy is that we have no clue how many have died in total. The Qataris have not released the figures.

Either way, the true price for venues like Khalifa International Stadium appears to have been many lives ...

… What would actually happen if a club like Liverpool, or an international federation like the FA, refused to take part in such an event because of moral concerns over the hosts?

Continue reading @ The Independent.