ACCIDENTAL SCAB

 Four matches in, and I accidentally stumbled on The Boy watching the Welsh destroy America.

My boycott was over.
I hated myself.

I tried not to watch, but like most of us I was subliminally entranced by the advertising hoardings.
Bigger, brighter, better than ever.
Revolving, shining, begging for attention, in the middle of the Gulf’s desert.

Among the usual suspects - Coke, Micky D’s ‘We Deliver’, VISA (and a tiny subordinate and seemingly unwanted Budweiser in the corner), there were the global behemoth ‘Others’.


Congruent and apparent were the heraldic emblems of Qatar Energy and Qatar Airways;
the CEO of the former being Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s Minister of Energy, and Chairman of Qatar Industries petrol company, Qatar Gulf drilling company, and Qatar Adriatic liquid natural gas company.
And all so close to the COP27 summit.
He has an honours degree from Penn State in 1991.
He states this on his Wiki page.

There were one or two In-Yer-Face ads that seemed to linger longer on the eyes than the others.
They weren’t familiar to me, so I did some research, mainly via good old Wikipedia (please donate!) and the FT.

BYJU’s was slightly familiar to me personally, due to its entrenchment in pre-pandemic Indian Cricket.


A tech company in the educational equipment sector, its current net worth is $22BILLION!
High fees, dodgy accounting, and suspect advertising claims abound.
It signed a multi billion contract with Qatar Investment Authority in March this year for an R&D dept in Doha.

QATAR INVESTMENT AUTHORITY in turn is basically the Sovereign Wealth Fund
Net worth $445BILLION!
The ‘Torygraph’ newspaper launched a campaign to highlight QIA’s involvement with terrorism, and there’s a lot of brouhaha surrounding their purchasing of Harrods (see ‘The Crown’ on Netflix).
QIA is the sole owner of Qatar Holding LLC, which in turn is affiliated to Qatar National Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, and Qatar Sports Investments.
It’s a tight little family business!

WANDA may be more familiar to some.


That good old Chinese Property Developer -  dealings with Sony, Boris Johnson, Canary Wharf, The Shard, Chelsea Barracks, FIFA til 2030, and announced in Doha, the sponsorship of the Diamond League Athletics, mainly held in Doha for the people of Doha (and their rich foreign friends), worth roughly $200BILLION based on recent projections, but not confirmed yet due to ‘Chinese Regulations’ (aka Cover Ups).
Yes.
THAT Wanda!

And then there’s the relentless & revolving Chinese characters and the Arabic writing that could say anything.
But my bet is it’s -  ‘’FUCK BUDWEISER - DRINK MORE OIL !"

“So what’s all this got to do with football? “ you might say.

Nothing.
Not really.

And also everything.
Literally ‘everything’.

How did the beautiful game turn so ugly?

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