Some commentators still talk about the World Cup as if it were halfway through. In fact, it’s almost over. 64 matches were scheduled to be played in the Finals in Qatar. 56 have already been played leaving just the four quarter-finals, two semi-finals, the third-place decider and the final to be played over the next 10 days. In this blog I want to talk about three aspects: the host nation’s organisation, FIFA’s organisation and the football itself and I will do it in that order.

In my blog World Cup – Will’e? (4)[i] which I posted at the start of the competition I complained bitterly as I have done before about the ridiculous decision to stage the World Cup in a hot country with limited facilities and zero experience of playing in the World Cup finals and very little tradition of football itself. I have seen nothing to change my mind and if anything I have seen or read about things that made the decision even harder to understand unless it was made corruptly.

Let’s just take one example and that is accommodation. When the decision was made in 2010 to award the World Cup to Qatar Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA at that time, later admitted that the case for Qatar did not meet any of the minimum standards for a football World Cup. One of those minimum standards is that there should be sufficient accommodation of sufficient quality to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of supporters who will come from all over the world not just to support their own nation but perhaps simply because they love football. The daily rate for two-person accommodation for football fans at the Ras Bu Fontas site in Qatar is £370. The lodgings, which handle up to 6000 people a night, are reported to be extremely uncomfortable, with loud and ineffective air conditioning, beeping smoke detectors and noisy electricity to generators. I saw TV coverage of another site that didn’t even have air conditioning of any kind and where the walls are made of plastic thus making them unbearably hot. The accommodation is extremely basic with very limited toilet facilities and one person was interviewed having spent thousands of dollars to get there and having spent thousands of dollars to book accommodation went home without staying for a single night. There are many more such examples.

There have also been many examples of fans being unable to get into stadia on time for the kick-off because of problems with ticketing, particularly ticketing that involves mobile phones, so much less reliable than traditional paper ticketing. Similar delays have been caused by technical problems at stadia and indeed serious traffic problems despite the fact that many new roads were built and a new Metro network opened. There is no question that Qatar has huge wealth and committed enormous sums to stage the World Cup but the criteria for hosting such a large-scale competition are not just money. They are also infrastructure, expertise, experience and a thorough list of other important qualities none of which are present in Qatar. You cannot just buy in such expertise. You need to have it in your own government, civil service and private enterprise. It is therefore extremely concerning that Qatar is now planning to make a bid to host the 2036 Olympic Games. When they hosted an international athletics competition recently the athletes ran the Marathon at midnight and fewer than half of them could complete the course with many having to go to hospital. Their new idea is to build an air-conditioned marathon course that would go in circles thus destroying the very spirit of an interesting marathon course through an interesting City like London. It is of further concern that the Emir of Qatar is now a member of the International Olympic Committee.

Turning to FIFA who, of course, are responsible for making the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar and therefore are responsible by implication for the failings that I have already discussed, but in addition they are responsible for the organisation of the football itself. In this respect there has been some improvement from previous World Cups particularly the South African World Cup that suffered from many problems. One interesting innovation at this World Cup has been the introduction of a new official whose job is to monitor from pitch side the degree to which time is lost not only to goals and substitutions but also to injuries and time wasting. Traditionally it was the referee who had responsibility for this and decided how much extra time should be played at the end of each half. As it is now the separate responsibility of this new official, as a result the time allowed for additional time has been greatly increased which suggests that referees were getting this part of their decision-making very wrong indeed and progress is to be welcomed.

However, the referee still has the principal responsibility for officiating the game and here the standard remains quite poor given that we assume the referees we are seeing are the best in the world. If that is the case, then there are thousands of really awful referees around the world. Again and again we are seeing massive inconsistency in the application of the laws with some laws being completely ignored and others interpreted in a random way. Here are just a few examples of laws that have not been properly applied.

How about the football itself? Here is a question for you. After the group stages how many teams remained undefeated over their three group games? Answer - five. Second question can you name them? Answer: Netherlands, England, Japan, Morocco and Croatia. Argentina, Brazil, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal all lost at least once to lower ranked opposition. Germany and Belgium both failed to qualify for the knock-out stages. This is healthy and it is good for the development of the game if the less considered nations can still find a way to beat one of the more established ones. But for the health of the competition itself one wants the better teams to get through and after the round of 16 normality was pretty well restored as of the remaining nations in the quarter-finals this weekend only Morocco can really be considered as an outsider, and they certainly played well to beat a frankly sub-par Spain in the round of 16. Morocco were ranked 22 in the FIFA World Rankings before the World Cup Finals started The other Quarter Finalists were ranked as follows:

Brazil 1.
Argentina 2
France 4.
England 5.
Netherlands 8.
Portugal 9.
Croatia 12.

What has also been welcome is that in at least a number of games there have been several goals scored - Spain scoring seven against Costa Rica, England six against Iran, Portugal five against Switzerland in the round of 16 and these were all attractive performances. There have also been a number of truly outstanding goals. I haven’t watched all the matches, nor have I watched all the highlights, but goals from Messi, Mbappé, Rashford, Saka, Bellingham and Ronaldo’s replacement for Portugal, Goncalo Ramos were all world-class.

And so the obvious final question is who is going to win? One semi-final could well be Argentina against Brazil and that may well decide not only who plays in the final but also the winner. Both England and France have players who can produce moments of magic to win any game and I wouldn’t rule out the Netherlands. Perhaps not as good as they have been in the past but still a very good side with a strong tradition of punching above their weight in the World Cup.

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