Let the football at the World Cup transcend the controversies around Qatar 2022

The football World Cup gets under way tomorrow, yet it hardly feels like we are on the verge of such an event.

The absence of the atmosphere that normally precedes this four-yearly sporting carnival is in large part due to the time of year. Britain is chilly, dark and often damp in November, and if it not for coming Christmas many people’s mood would be low.

Most world cups happen when it is summer in the UK, and fans are in a more outdoor and sporting mindset, or they travel to see the contest first-hand in more accessible countries like Italy.

Another factor in the subdued feeling around this year’s tournament is the strangeness of it being held in the city state of Qatar.

That such a country defeated far more plausible host candidates such as Australia was even more surprising than Russia winning the rights to hold the 2018 cup over England (which is overdue as host, given its history in the origins of the sport, and its internationally famous Premier League).

The decision to reward Qatar with such a huge occasion heightened concerns about corruption in Fifa.

Top-level global sport is tainted by mega-money, which creates problems from drug cheating to match fixing to petulant conduct in over-paid young stars.

Ethics can be discarded when dollar signs are blazing, as the LIV golf tour demonstrates, funded by money from Saudi Arabia, a repressive state that – as the evil murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi showed – is stained by blood.

But we are where we are. The cup is about to begin and will be a great spectacle. It will also be curious to watch international teams compete in a fantasy kingdom that had a mere 45,000 population sixty years ago and now has three million.

Let’s hope the sportsmanship transcends the controversies around Qatar 2022.