THE greatest polluters on the planet are China, India, Russia, the US – and Fifa.
At a time when climate change is the major concern of the human race, Fifa, in its infinite stupidity, has decided that the 2030 World Cup will be held on three different continents.
Never mind that football fans will need to mortgage their soul to follow the globe-trotting action.
Never mind that players will be expected to perform while enduring the thick fog of jet lag.
What about the planet? Whatever your personal beliefs about climate change, we can perhaps all agree that this is not the time to start encouraging recreational air travel on a scale never seen before at any major sporting event.
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“The world is drowning, burning, sweating — then Fifa announces a World Cup on three continents,” raged one concerned citizen.
“I assume the teams, staff and fans won’t switch to sailing ships?”
Fifa could make your grandfather feel like joining Extinction Rebellion.
And even if the world was not getting hotter, the plan for 2030 makes no sense.
The first World Cup was in Uruguay, in 1930.
And there may be a sentimental case to be made for hosting the 2030 World Cup in Montevideo.
But 2030 will also include the neighbouring nations of Argentina and Paraguay, for — er — well, nobody really knows, although Paraguay is the home of Alejandro Dominguez, boss of Fifa’s South American confederation. So it will be handy for him.
“We aimed high and dreamed big,” preened Alejandro.
No, mate — you are doing what Fifa always does. Cocking up the greatest event in the world’s favourite sport.
After South America, the later rounds will be held in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
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And the suspicion lingers that Fifa’s inclusion of Morocco — meaning that 2030 will be played in Africa, Europe and South America — is just to pave the way for the 2034 World Cup to be held in the Middle East.
Grubby, inept machinations
And Saudi Arabia just announced their intention to bid for 2034. Well, blow me down. What an incredible coincidence.
The Qatar World Cup was bad enough — wrong season, wrong climate, wrong country if you give a damn about human rights.
But the football somehow transcended the grubby, inept machinations of Fifa — and Qatar itself.
2030 will struggle to do the same. And the fans will pay the highest price.
“This is beyond belief,” says England band trumpeter John Hemmingham, 60, who has not missed a Three Lions game since 1996.
“It cost me and my mate £20,000 to go to Qatar but the cost of flying to South America and back then travelling around Spain, Portugal and Morocco will be astronomical. Fifa couldn’t care less about real fans like me.”
But Fifa does not exist to benefit fans — or even football.
Fifa exists for the benefit of Fifa alone.
At the Qatar World Cup, Fifa chief Gianni Infantino reacted to perfectly reasonable criticism of the Qatar World Cup by shrieking that it was, “the best World Cup ever!”
It was Infantino who rejected concerns about the host nation’s values by claiming defensively: “Today I feel gay! Today I feel disabled! Today I feel (like) a migrant worker!”
Football is the sport of the world.
Football is the never-ending story of our lives.
Football gets in your soul as a tiny child and you carry it with you for a lifetime.
My fondest memories of my dad, my mum and my family are reflected through the prism of football.
Football is the golden thread that binds us to parents long gone, childhoods long vanished and summers long past.
And football, and its greatest competition, deserve so much better than Fifa.
U2’S BIG MUSIC MOMENT
I HAVE a mate who attended the U2 gig at The Sphere in Las Vegas, which features an LED screen that is six storeys high, constructed inside the biggest spherical structure on the planet.
I think he enjoyed it. He is still speechless.
The Sphere – 516ft wide, 366ft tall, comprising nearly 300million video pixels – probably needs to be experienced to be believed.
But from what I’ve seen, it looks like it provides one of those transcendent moments that happens in music every ten years or so.
U2 at The Sphere feels like the first time Elvis shook his hips, or The Beatles appearing on The Ed Sullivan show, or the first time Johnny Rotten glared at a live TV camera.
One of those seismic moments when suddenly the music – and our entire culture – is in a new place.
I hope the Rolling Stones live long enough to play this magical venue in Vegas.
I hope I live long enough to be there.
A CLASS ACT, EVE
ONE of Ireland’s rising acting stars is Eve Hewson, who plays a single mum living in a poor part of Dublin known as The Flats in her new film, Flora And Son.
The only thing that should matter is her performance – mind-blowingly good.
But what some critics focus on is who her dad is – Bono.
“There’s something very uncomfortable about watching Bono’s daughter playing a working class single mother from The Flats,” says Irish actor Joseph McGucken.
Please.
But by that criteria, Helen Mirren – who is not Jewish – should not be playing Golda Meir in her film about the Israeli leader.
And Mirren as Meir looks like an Oscar-winning turn to me.
Eve Hewson is warm, funny and incredibly moving as a single mum.
That should be the only thing that matters.
JURGEN Klopp is gnashing his snow-white gnashers.
Who can blame him?
VAR got it spectacularly wrong in last Saturday’s Spurs vs Liverpool match, disallowing a Liverpool goal that should have stood.
And if VAR is only as reliable as the laughably fallible humans behind it, then what is the point of it?
Great Kate is a big boost for Ukraine
THE Princess of Wales carried a yellow and blue bouquet of flowers into a community centre in Bracknell, Berks, where she met Ukrainian refugees and volunteers who were putting together packages of food and toiletries.
Kate also met Ukrainian psychologist Tetiana Sverdlova, who is helping displaced Ukrainians to adjust to their new lives here.
“We are all thinking of you,” Kate wrote on one Ukraine-bound package.
Sadly, many of the countries in the West are thinking about Ukraine less and less.
In August, CNN reported that a majority of Americans – 55 per cent – now oppose giving more US aid to Ukraine.
This week Newsweek reported that European support for Ukraine is “plummeting” – down from 55 per cent to 36 per cent.
Increasingly, there are voices saying: enough.
But not here.
This country has been unwavering in its support for Ukraine from the very start of Russia’s murderous invasion.
That will not change.
And like Kate the great, we should all be proud of that.
THE Strictly rumours whisper that Les Dennis – the show’s first celebrity out of the 2023 exit door – clashed with his pro dance partner, Nancy Xu, and this contributed to Les’s shock axing.
Reports suggest the energy levels of Nancy, 32, were too much for Les, who turns 70 next week.
And here’s me thinking the comic got kicked off the show just because he can’t dance for toffee.
RISHI ON RIGHT TRACK
IF Labour honestly object to Rishi Sunak pulling the plug on that money-pit-on-wheels HS2, then they will have every chance to reinstate it if they form the next government.
HS2 is a project spanning decades.
If Labour get in, it will happen in around a year.
So reinstating HS2 – and its virtually limitless budget – is Labour’s choice.
Yet they will not.
Labour bitch about Rishi Sunak aborting the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg of this runaway white elephant.
But they don’t want it back.
Labour lack the courage to do what Sunak did in Manchester.
The easiest thing in the world would be to kick the can down the unfinished railway track. Spend time to “reflect”.
But Sunak called time on this grotesque waste of taxpayers’ billions.
Rishi has other ideas on how to spend £36billion on the infrastructure of the North.
Knowing the howls of fury it would provoke, Rishi STILL ripped up that blank cheque.
Future generations will wonder why the greatest waste of taxpayers’ money in our history was allowed to go on for so long.
OH, GIVE IT A MIS
THE audience who went to see Les Miserables in London on Wednesday had been planning their big night for months, possibly years.
The longest-running musical in the West End – and the greatest – is still a hot ticket.
Hotels booked, journeys planned, tickets bought. Months of excited anticipation.
All ruined when Just Stop Oil simpletons invaded the stage with their pious banners just as the cast began Do You Hear The People Sing?
One man’s enraged cry said it all: “How dare you?”
When will these middle class kiddies realise they do their cause nothing but harm?
