Greed Has Ruined the World Cup: Why I, Son of the Doyen of Soccer Writers, Won’t be Watching Any Matches

I was brought up in a home where soccer was God. In 1958, my father, the journalist and author, Brian Glanville co-authored a history of the World Cup with Jerry Weinstein. He would become the doyen of soccer writers and covered every World Cup until he was no longer physically capable of doing so. In 1973, my father published a new history of the World Cup, which was updated and republished before each tournament until 2018. In 1966, he wrote the script for the BAFTA award-winning film “Goal,” a celebration of England’s unique triumph in that competition.My father died last year. One of my tasks has been to sift through the vast collection of soccer programmes he accumulated. Among the dusty pile in the attic are many World Cup programmes, dating back to the one in Sweden in 1958 when a certain 17-year-old Brazilian, Pelé, arguably the greatest player of all time, caught everyone’s attention for the first time. Accordingly, given the celestial role of football in my house growing up, I watched each game of every World Cup religiously, though I never attended a competition in person. While club football, first with Manchester United, then with Millwall, elicited fanaticism in me that sometimes led to violence, the drab English football team rarely enthused me in the same way. My more parochial passion trumped my patriotism. Once England had been inevitably knocked out, I would transfer my allegiance to Italy, or Brazil, or Holland, exciting, technically masterful sides, enjoying the sheer pleasure of watching great football.Brian Glanville and his wife Pamela at the premiere of ‘Goal’ in 1966. Mark GlanvilleThe 23rd World Cup starts in just under a week’s time in America, Canada, and Mexico. I hadn’t been very enthusiastic about the World Cup for some time before Qatar won the right to host it in 2022 via dubious means, perfected by the likes of South Africa in 2010 and Russia in 2018. But while one could see some virtue in those two countries hosting it, I saw none whatever in Qatar, “a hot little footballing minuscule,” to quote my ever-witty and acerbic father, with no deep football tradition and a climate so unbearable that the competition would have to be played in winter rather than summer for the first time since the competition had begun in 1930. I had sung the King of Ethiopia in Verdi’s “Aida” while in Qatar in the early 1990s on tour. Of the many countries of the Arab Gulf we performed in, Qatar was the least developed and appealing. Had anyone suggested that 30 years later they’d be hosting a World Cup, I would have laughed in their face.Money had greased the wheels of Qatar’s selection and there was plenty in this gas-and-oil-rich state to build the stadia missing in a country with no footballing tradition. Native Qataris did not plan to get their hands dirty or forfeit their lives in this endeavour. Instead, cheap migrant labour was brought in from poor Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal. A Guardian article published in 2021 came up with the dreadful total of 6,500 deaths related to the building of the stadia. North Korean workers on those sites were not even paid directly, but saw the money sent directly to their government, to be held in escrow for a return many of them never saw.Lionel Messi prepares to take a penalty during the FIFA World Cup 2022 Final between Argentina and France in Doha, Qatar. Tom Jenkins/Getty ImagesIn 1968, my father was in Mexico to cover the Olympics for the Sunday Times. Besides athletics, he also found himself bravely reporting the massacre of 300 students by the Mexican government. So shocked was he by the subsequent cover-up and the lack of interest shown by athletes, he swore he would never cover another Olympics. His decision was tragically justified by the horrific massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.My father was too old and frail to attend the Qatar World Cup, but in the corrupt and callous semi-slavery environment at Qatar I saw parallels with those past Olympics. I was also appalled by the virtue-signalling of the English football team under coach Gareth Southgate who reverently took the knee at the behest of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a gesture that was highly controversial and booed by black fans of my own club, Millwall, who saw through the virtue-signalling hypocrisy.The Qatar World Cup provided a perfect opportunity for footballers to raise awareness of modern-day slavery and abuse of foreign workers, not to mention the criminalisation of homosexuality. But money continued to talk. While there was nothing to lose by taking the knee, a boycotting of the World Cup might involve risk to pocket and career. And so they played on, allowing Qatar a platform for promotion. Better not to have brought politics into the game at all than to have dealt in such rank hypocrisy.Brian Glanville at his house in West London. Mark GlanvilleI was so disgusted by the whole affair that I chose not to watch a single game of the 2022 World Cup. And I won’t be watching this time either. Another of my brave and tenacious father’s targets as a journalist was the English Premier League, which he christened the “Greed is Good” League after the top division fell in thrall to Rupert Murdoch and Sky TV. Since its inception in 1992, his prophecy has been fulfilled as the top division has become increasingly unaffordable and increasingly removed from its working-class roots, gradually transforming into the plaything of the rich, an anodyne, passionless vessel, emptied of the colour and vitality that had so drawn me as a youngster.The prices for entry to the 2026 World Cup in America are further fulfilment of my father’s vision. A ticket for the final will set you back $11,000, with even group stage matches coming in at $4,000. The cheapest ticket available, for the games few want to see, will cost you $380. When I started watching football in the 1970s, I could see a top league game for 50 cents. Anyone could afford to go.All of which is to say that I’m done with the World Cup — the corruption, the greed, the blood. I’ve been a Yankees fan almost 40 years so if I’m going to stay up late to watch sport in America this year, it’ll be the baseball.

Greed Has Ruined the World Cup: Why I, Son of the Doyen of Soccer Writers, Won’t be Watching Any Matches

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