FIFA boss Gianni Infantino promises “the most incredible event the world has ever seen”. But the message of the World Cup in Qatar has long been different: money can buy anything. And really everything.
essay by
Claudio Catuogno, Doha
By noon it was Souq Waqif, Doha’s historic market labyrinth, which has long since featured international sculpture art and is hung with QR codes, still lying lazily in the sun. Not a breath of wind blew through the thousands upon thousands of country flags that have recently been strung across the streets here, and in front of the Mareeb Yameni Honey Center the traders dozed off in their snow-white thob robes. Then the Mexicans came. So the real ones, the ones from Toluca, central Mexico.