NORMALLY, with only a matter of days and hours before the start of a World Cup I would be bouncing off the walls with anticipation and excitement at the prospect of such a footballing jamboree.

Not this time. Because Qatar 2022 is tainted. Utterly tainted. 

I view engaging with this World Cup akin to crossing a picket line. I’ve never crossed a picket line in my life and hardly intend to start now. 

Here’s why I won’t be crossing this picket line. 

History will not judge this World Cup kindly. Why would it when basic human rights are being denied. 

Why would you award a tournament to a state where, in the words of Beth Mead, “you’re not allowed to love who you want to love.”

Where LBGTQ+ rights are denied, where being gay is a crime, where political activism is met with a jail sentence. Where women’s rights are non-existent and females of all ages face deep discrimination, lacking even basic freedoms.

Where migrant workers’ rights are simply non-existent, leading to the deaths of so many stadium labourers, essentially indentured into serfdom. Where working conditions were scandalously dangerous and where families of the bereaved are yet to be compensated.

Where freedom of the press is an existential question to be batted away by the authorities rather than a just reality. Where the bill for such a grotesque event is $150 billion, 10 times more than the budget for Putin’s World Cup in 2018. 

We all know the reason why Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup.

Holding a global sporting tournament in a country one-tenth the size of New York was a strange decision, bordering on the edge of propriety.

The award to host the event came in 2010, after a majority of Fifa’s 22 voting members in its executive committee decided that a tiny gulf state would be worthy recipients. 

Such a worthy recipient that girls and women are not even allowed to pull on a pair of football boots and play the game.

Such a worthy recipient that had no previous hint of passion for football, let alone a functioning domestic football league, or any hint of embedded fan culture. That Qatar was deemed to be the correct place to be handed the rights to the world’s second biggest sporting event after the Olympics beggars belief. No wonder they’ve desperately paid fans to be “influencers” — whatever that infernal phrase means. 

The seventh circle of hell should await former Fifa president Sepp Blatter for the way his crass and craven leadership contaminated the body of the biggest sport for decades. 

Not least in the light of at least 16 of those aforementioned 22 voting members being implicated or investigated over alleged corruption or ‘bad practice,’ in the years since. 

As if to add a contemptuous irony to proceedings, only last week did Blatter allege that the World Cup was given to Qatar thanks to then Uefa president Michel Platini. 

The former French international — one of the best players I’ve seen play the game in the flesh, and sadly, alas, one of the most venal administrators — said to be under pressure from then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, used the sway he held over a number of the voting members, in a bid to boost France’s and Sarkozy’s influence in geo-political matters.

Murky genesis aside, future historians will also surely want to examine just why a tournament was handed to Qatar — not least when environmental groups have seriously questioned claims by the Qatari state that this tournament will be carbon neutral. 

Nearly four million tonnes of CO2 are set be generated — compared to the 2.1m that was emitted during the event in Russia four years previously.

Spending billions on a single stadium that would struggle to be used in any form of coherent legacy is an uncomfortable fact — but to splash the cash on a great big herd of eight white elephants beggars belief.

As someone of Middle Eastern heritage I would have loved this World Cup to have been hosted in an Arabic country — but one that deserved it on its merits, such as Egypt, Morocco or Algeria — not a petro-chemical state severely lacking in democratic ideals, and sadly lacking even a love of the beautiful game. To hand Qatar this now devalued sporting bauble has been a huge dereliction of duty by Fifa. 

And, as a fan who has attended numerous men’s and women’s football tournaments across the globe, I feel no schadenfreude for those supporters determined to support their team in such an already discredited event — not even when the news broke just as I started writing and researching this column — that closing time is set to be called on beer sales, in astonishing U-turn by the Qatari’s. 

Or if you do find such contraband somewhere without being imprisoned for the privilege, it’ll cost you northwards of £12 a (plastic) pint. 

That’s without mentioning the fact that many supporters are set to “enjoy” their stay in the Gulf State by sleeping in shipping containers — sans air conditioning of course — for the privilege of forking out the princely sum of £500 a night. Good luck with that, have fun lads.

Once the tournament kicks-off, I will be refraining from reading, writing, commenting, or watching the World Cup — whether it be catching a game down the pub with friends, describing the action via the written word, or even discussing incidents on social media, including Twitter. 

(As an aside, how surreal that Twitter appears to be falling apart — thanks to an infantile billionaire whose notion of capitalism is as a rapacious, yet bafflingly incompetent, 21st mill owner, whose actions have devalued the platform completely, costing him $44 billion to do so.)

So, if you still think obsessing on the fitness of your team’s reserve right-back is worth crossing a “picket line” then go for it and watch this World Cup. Just don’t expect me to join in. 

For me to be invested in sport, to live it, to breathe it — to care about it — it must mean something. And this World Cup leaves me cold and disinterested.  

I’ve never crossed a picket line in my life — and I don’t intend to start now. 

See you on the other side. Because Qatar 2022 is tainted. Utterly tainted.