Interview ‘Sorry virtue-signallers, I’m enjoying the Qatar experience’

Piers Morgan once called for Fifa to strip the emirate of the World Cup, now he is fully on board and loving it

A World Cup in Qatar is, at many levels, the perfect polemical battleground for Piers Morgan. Thanks to a maelstrom of ethical conundrums, Machiavellian politics and achingly worthy protests, the desert sands of Doha are fertile ground for Britain’s pre-eminent controversialist. Where many reproach themselves for taking pleasure in this complex and dubiously awarded tournament, Morgan, true to form, revels in pushing against the prevailing wind.

“I’ve been really enjoying it,” he says. “I’m sorry if that offends the virtue-signallers.”

The exasperation with virtuesignalling has become a signature Morgan trait. In the monologue to launch his nightly Talktv show in April, he promised to deliver an antidote to “insufferable self-righteousness”. Here in Qatar, where he has been presenting for the past week, he scarcely lacks ammunition for this crusade. Whether in Germany’s hands-across-mouths gesture to protest at being muzzled by Fifa, or in England’s empty pledge to wear a “Onelove” rainbow armband – a statement against the host nation’s criminalising of same-sex relationships – he has seen enough moralising to erupt with Krakatoan force.

“It’s selective outrage about Qatar, which is completely overblown,” Morgan rages. “The whole armband issue goes right to the heart of it. We were told by the Football Association, and by Harry Kane, that he and other European captains were all going to wear the armband. It was a moral stance they were going to take to justify going to the World Cup.

“Great. Good for you. However, they buckled the moment that they were threatened with a yellow card. What kind of principle is that? If they’re going to melt at the first sign of a card being waved in their faces, it’s just completely embarrassing. It shows the problem with all this – that ultimately, it’s virtuesignalling, without any real core of principle.” He is even more caustic about the Germans’ gesture, savaging it as “one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever watched”.

Morgan, 57, implacable in his view that political demonstrations have no place at this World Cup, has thrown himself into the more opulent elements of Doha life. He spent one evening at the shamelessly ostentatious Nusr-et Steakhouse, trying to emulate owner Salt Bae’s technique for seasoning a gold-leaf sirloin. He has also been a fixture at Fox’s giant open-air studio on the

Corniche, mocking Alexi Lalas, the former United States centre-back, about his tuneless rendition of The Star-spangled Banner.

Agitated by certain efforts to impose Western values on an ultraconservative Islamic society, he portrays his own experience of Qatar in terms at which even David Beckham, the emirate’s premier global ambassador, might balk. So, too, does his fellow provocateur Graeme Souness. “He told me this was the best World Cup he had attended,” Morgan says. “He says he feels incredibly safe, that if you want a drink, there are plenty of places you can find one. It has been exceptionally well-run. The traffic issues have been non-existent, some people have even been able to walk from stadium to stadium. It has all felt intimate, good fun.”

Now for the flipside: the warped bidding process that brought us here, the hundreds of migrant workers who died during the buildup, the possibility of Doha’s eight World Cup venues becoming the gaudiest white elephants.

There are suggestions that Morgan’s new-found admiration for Qatar is inconsistent with his past

comments. In an example of the “offence archaeology” that he abhors, a tweet of his, since deleted, has been excavated from June 2015, when he wrote: “Russia and Qatar must have their World Cups removed. Both bids mired in sleaze and corruption via Blatter and his Fifa cronies.”

But he is adamant that his objections have been focused squarely on Fifa, not Qatar. “While I’ve not seen evidence so far that anyone from Qatar has been corrupt, Fifa has been riddled with corruption, and that’s a disgrace,” he says. “The whole thing has been a complete racket. The process of awarding World Cups to Russia and Qatar stank. But England was also in the bidding. So, it comes back to our moral fitness to host the World Cup. I remind people that when we last hosted the World Cup and won it, it was illegal to be homosexual in the UK. That has to be a reality check

about our moral positions against other regions in the world.”

It is striking how starkly Morgan’s approach to portraying Qatar 2022 contrasts with that of Gary Lineker. While the BBC host prefaced the first match with a rebuke to critics who suggested he and his fellow pundits should “stick to football”, Morgan declared to his viewers: “This tournament bears no resemblance to the doom-mongering headlines back home.”

“Gary is a big friend of mine, but when he did his sermon on the mount at the start of this World Cup, he didn’t do it at the start of Russia 2018,” Morgan points out. “I would like to ask him why, given that Russia had invaded Crimea four years earlier. And what will he do in four years’ time, when the tournament is shared between the US, Canada and Mexico? Will he criticise Mexico for its very poor human rights record? Will he attack America’s gun laws or abortion laws? I bet your life he won’t. And that, to me, is hypocrisy.”

Lineker, in his defence, has since admitted to regret at not speaking out about Russia at the time. But little mollifies Morgan in his debates with his favourite sparring partner. They are one of the great odd couples of British broadcasting, he and Lineker: close to each other personally, but like oil and water in their stances on the culture wars.

On Qatar, Morgan makes the point, more loudly than his contemporaries, that any activism by England in Qatar risks coming across as two-faced. “Look, 25 per cent of our gas comes from Qatar. We’re in the middle of an energy crisis. Without gas from Qatar, we would be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.”

If Morgan feels well-disposed towards this World Cup, it might also be because his previous experience of a major tournament was, in common with everyone else who attended last year’s Euros final at Wembley, unutterably bleak. Besides catching Covid that night, he observed the scenes of cocainefuelled carnage with despair. “It was completely shameful. People in the Middle East see that and ask, ‘Really, you’re lecturing us about how to run a football tournament?’”

On his rare downtime in Doha, Morgan has tried to see the city by

‘If they are going to melt at the first sign of a card being waved in their faces, what kind of principle is that?’

‘Will Lineker criticise Mexico’s poor human rights record? Will he attack US gun laws? I bet he won’t’

foot. In the West Bay district he can hardly fail to be stopped in his tracks by the skyscraper-height banner of Cristiano Ronaldo, whose indiscretions on his set this month are still the talk of the town.

“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever been involved with,” he says of the interview, which spelt the end of Ronaldo’s second spell at Manchester United. Not that Portugal’s poster boy appears too unhappy.

“I texted Cristiano a GIF of William Wallace in Braveheart shouting, ‘Freedom!’” he discloses. “He thought that was a perfect summation of how he felt. ‘Free as a bird’ was his response.”

Reports that Ronaldo is poised to join Saudi Arabian club Al-nassr on an eye-watering £173million a year are, he indicates, premature. “He thinks that if he does well at this World Cup, he’ll get what he really wants, which is a club in the Champions League that extends his record and his legacy,” Morgan says. “It’s not about money at this stage of his career. It comes down to a burning desire to play football at the highest level, to break records and win trophies. And he has done that in more countries than any other player in history.”

There is, of course, an alternative depiction of Ronaldo: that of an incorrigible narcissist who even claimed Bruno Fernandes’s goal against Uruguay when he had made no contact with the ball. “Yes, he has a big ego,” Morgan laughs. “But I’m hardly going to be in a position to lecture people about that.”*