Anyone interested in the fantastic team sports of football (yeah we know, Americans mean something else with it), would love to watch the matches between the qualified nations in the ongoing football tournament in Qatar. Either in television or live on the scene. But this time around - as perhaps four years ago in Russia - it is a big if whether that love exceeds the disgust for everything surrounding this otherwise marvellous and exciting tournament.

It is not just the treatment and all the deaths of all the foreign, underpaid workers who helped build the arenas. Or the fact that much of the infrastructure is doomed useless after the tournament. Or the climate that is just too hot for both players and spectators. Or the lack of the latter in the stadiums as the seats are not freely occupied by anyone but the male population of the host nation. And neither is it the fact that women’s rights are severely restricted in the country. Those are not, sadly enough, the only reasons for not watching the tournament.

It is also for the total contradictory terms where the, some would say, the King of sports - is played. Where the freedom of the round ball and its kickers withers like the trees under that hot sun. Where freedom of speech and self-expression is restricted under the penalty of sanctions and fines. Where money talks louder than the voice of millions of people who love the sports. That green grass is just as green there, in Qatar, on the surface of those football fields. But that green is illusory, and takes a lot from the enthusiasm we sport fans would love to show for each game, for each goal and for each player. So, some of us, switch the channel and watch something else. And wait for the next tournament, elsewhere.