You often hear about ‘legacy’ when international sporting tournaments come around. It’s a weasel word used by the organisers to justify the colossal expense by promising some lasting benefit – which usually comes to nothing. But perhaps with the Qatar World Cup, one of the most controversial in the competition’s history, there may be a worthwhile legacy, though not one the organisers could possibly have anticipated.
Ironically, it is probably the sheer boringness of much World Cup football that has led to so much of the TV coverage focusing on the crowd
For it is being suggested that the scenes of maskless supporters in Qatar’s soccer stadia has helped push the Chinese, suffocating and desperate after repeated lengthy and fiercely enforced lockdowns, to take to the streets and mount the most serious challenge to Xi Jinping’s regime yet seen.
The World Cup seems to be seriously undermining the foundations of the zero Covid policy.
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