World Cup 2022 opening ceremony LIVE: Qatar ready to raise curtain on football’s greatest show

On Sunday at Al Bayt Stadium, Gianni Infantino will be more than willing to share the spotlight with the Emir of Qatar, but it isn’t a privilege the newly re-elected Fifa president affords many. Take a story from a few weeks ago. With the World Cup 2022 so close, the Lisbon-based Web Summit wanted both Arsene Wenger and Infantino to come and do a talk. Negotiations broke down for a few reasons, but one element raises a chuckle from those with knowledge of the talks. There was a request for Infantino to have a more prominent speaking slot than Wenger.

The story does tally with a common refrain from a lot of people you speak to about Infantino.

“It’s all about him.”

There was then whatever that World Cup opening press conference was. Infantino surpassed himself as well as Sepp Blatter with a cascade of frankly astonishing statements. The Fifa president attempted a statesman’s address but essentially just showed why the game is in the state it is. You could joke it was the biggest miss to open a World Cup since Diana Ross’s penalty, except the truth is so many of the issues he blithely glossed over are so serious, from the conditions of migrant workers to LGBTQ+ concerns in Qatar.

Out of the many facts and figures circulated about Qatar’s problems, there is one realisation that should stand above everything. It is a disgrace that, in 2022, a country can host a World Cup where it has lured millions of people from the poorest countries on earth – often under false pretences – and then forced them into what many call “modern slavery”.

And yet this has just been accepted. The World Cup carries on, an end product of a structure that is at once Orwellian and Kafkaesque. A huge underclass of people work in an autocratic surveillance state, amid an interconnected network of issues that make it almost impossible to escape. “It’s all so embedded,” says Michael Page of Human Rights Watch.

Many will point to similar problems in the west but this isn’t the failure of a system. It is the system, global inequality taken to an extreme. “The bottom line is that these human rights abuses are not normal for a World Cup host,” says Minky Worden, also of Human Rights Watch.

After all the controversy, the 2022 World Cup finally gets under way in Qatar on Sunday, when the hosts face Ecuador.

Qatar coach Felix Sanchez, meanwhile, is hoping for the best when the Gulf nation make their World Cup debut in Al Khor, while there was a late injury blow for France, with Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema ruled out of the tournament.

Here ’s a look back at Saturday’s events at the 2022 World Cup and ahead to Sunday’s action:

Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s coverage of the 2022 Fifa World Cup. This is it.

Perhaps the most controversial of any World Cups gets underway this afternoon following years of controversy and coverage over Qatar’s human rights issues and how the country treats its migrant workforce, not to mention the laws restricting the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino fanned the flames of anger towards the host nation with an appallingly offensive speech yesterday which alienated most of the minority groups harmed by Qatar’s morality and as well as taking shots at the western media for their coverage of Qatar’s problems.

Yet the tournament goes on and there is football to play. An opening ceremony is scheduled for 2pm this afternoon before the action kicks off with Qatar vs Ecuador at 4pm. We’ll bring you all the news and updates throughout the day before live coverage of the opening ceremony and the first fixture of the 2022 World Cup.