KEIR RADNEDGE in DOHA*: Arachnaphobics beware. A giant spider glowers over the central piazza in the extensive glass-and-steel main media centre in Doha.

A dual existence is all too obvious, both practical and metaphorical. On one level “meet you under the spider” is a handy direction to facilitate a reunion with colleagues old and new. On the other hand our spider looms over journalists, officials and staff just as issues of construction fatalities, workers conditions, human rights and LGBTQ+ concerns cast their over the tournament itself.

A reminder of the negativity – as if one were needed! – was the burden of FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s hour-long pre-finals diatribe.

Infantino did raise a host of valid discussion points but most were lost to view after his tone-deaf delivery irritated factions on both sides of the arguments. Did an anti-colonist stance grant a rich Swiss lawyer the right to don a cloak of victimhood? Even those absentee purveyors of weary antagonistic wisdom found nothing to cheer.

If nothing else he demonstrated only that sport and politics are as indivisibly bound as legs of the spider.

** Keir Radnedge has attended every World Cup since 1966.

##########