Human rights organizations have labeled the almost hour-long speech that FIFA President Gianni Infantino delivered on the eve of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as “crass” and an “insult” to migrant workers. The speech took place in Qatar.
At the start of a press conference in Doha, FIFA president Gianni Infantino made an impassioned speech in which he criticized Western critics of Qatar for their hypocrisy over the country’s human rights record. Infantino leads FIFA, the organization responsible for overseeing soccer on a global scale, as its president.
“What we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before beginning to provide moral lessons,” he added. “We should apologize for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons.” “The process of reform and transformation is time-consuming. It takes a couple of hundred years in each of our European nations. It takes time everywhere, and the only way to obtain results is to engage people in conversation rather than yelling at them.
The tournament, which will begin on Sunday, is the first time that the World Cup has been held in the Middle East; however, it has been mired in controversy, with much of the build-up focusing on human rights, including the death of migrants workers and the conditions that many have endured in Qatar, as well as LGBTQ and women’s rights. The tournament will begin on Sunday.
Infantino said that some criticism was “profoundly unfair” and blamed the West for having double standards, despite the fact that he admitted that things were not ideal.
