Qatar World Cup: Wrong time, wrong place for the wrong reasons but let's try to enjoy it anyway

There is an air of escapism about being able to sit in front of your television day after day watching the world's best players compete for football’s biggest prize thousands of miles away. And right now, there is plenty to escape from.

But for some, this tournament will be unwatchable because of the bad taste it leaves in their mouths.

Hopefully the grubby day in December 2010 when FIFA, for reasons best known to its officials' bank balances, voted to hand its showpiece event to Vladimir Putin's Russia in 2018 and a small-minded desert state unsuitable for summer football four years later goes down as the low point in the shameful story of FIFA corruption rather than just another part of the slippery slope.

Greed has compounded it to produce a situation where the world's top footballers are under-prepared to show their best football – or at least those lucky enough not to have had to pull out through injury such as Saido Mane, Ngolo Kante, Reece James and Paul Pogba.

When the vote was taken to host the tournament in Qatar, it was on the premise it would be held in the European summer, as World Cups are. When it was accepted this was inhumanly infeasible, the games were wedged into the domestic season as uncomfortably as some of the lyrics into whatever version of Three Lions Baddiel and Skinner’s latest one is with no one seemingly prepared to give enough ground to create breathing space for it.

Beyond the big injuries, we can only hope it does not tell on the quality of football, but it seems unlikely.

The players have a job to do but must not obey FIFA's directive to ignore the unacceptable things they see. Just because Qatar has bought a sportswashing World Cup does not mean the rest of us have to play along.

Top marks for England – a football team with a conscience the country can be proud of under Gareth Southgate's leadership and by no means the only one – for arriving on a "Gay Pride"-decorated plane, holding a training session for migrant workers and giving them free tickets to games.

Apologists argue this World Cup has highlighted some of the problems in Qatar but if the Danish and Irish media were treated so badly this week –prevented from filming in a public place by heavy-handed officials – it does not bode well for LGBTQ+ supporters, for example.

Organisers recruiting fake fans is hardly promising either for what will feel like quite aplastic World Cup from air-conditioned stadia.

That arguments over beer sales are only happening now sums it up.

Qatar's record could have had a light shone on it without it being rewarded with a prestige international sporting tournament.

But those arguments are years too late.

Once the Faustian pact is consumated when Qatar play Ecuador at 4pm on Sunday we must hope the football makes up for the politics.

It will be a farewell World Cup for two all-time greats in Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – one growing older more gracefully than the other right now. The players of Argentina and Portugal would love to send their talisman off with a winner's medal around his neck.

Wales will not be able to give Gareth Bale quite that send off, but the motivation is the same, and Uruguay and Croatia could take Luis Suarez and Luca Modric a long way.

Sadly one of the candidates to emerge as a new world talent, France’s Christopher Nkunku, was another injury casualty this week but some will break out.

Just seeing the evocative shirts of Brazil and the Netherlands – albeit the latter's manufacturers seem to have been working off the wrong colour chart – makes a World Cup come to life and they have players worthy of filling them. With Dutch coach Louis van Gaal set to retire after the tournament as he is suffering prostate cancer, there is another romantic backstory available.

European champions Italy failed to qualify and France look badly beaten up but African champions Senegal – featuring Sheffield United's Iliman Ndiaye – will be there, potentially lying in wait for England in round two, whilst Denmark look dark horses, if semi-finalists at the last European Championship can be described as such.

Germany look in better fettle under Hansi Flick and the exciting youngsters Spain showed off two summers ago have that bit more experience.

As for England, they bring a curious mix to the table.

Their 2022 form is poor but their tournament record under Southgate formidable. Harry Kane, Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham look to be going in overworked, Yorkshiremen Kyle Walker, Kalvin Phillips and Harry Maguire undercooked. Their squad has an embarrassment of riches in some areas, an embarrassing lack of them in others.

With no clear winner anyway, the unusual timing, preparations and conditions could make it an even more open tournament.

This could be a good World Cup in spite of itself or a monument to greed over gumption. We can worry about which when it is over.