Off Air... with Jane and Fi - It's (probably not) coming home...is it?

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

With the World Cup in Qatar now just days away and off the back of Gareth Southgate's squad announcement, Jane and Fi look ahead to the competition with The Times chief football writer Henry Winter.They also question the longstanding criticism surrounding the tournament with the sports broadcaster Kate Mason - whose new podcast documentary Inside Qatar, with Football Ramble, charts her first hand experience of the human stories behind the controversial competition.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and we thought we'd like to bring you a special extra time bonus off air with me Jane Garvey and me Feever, because the World Cup is now just around the corner and the England men's team for the tournament has been announced. We've been looking ahead to the competition in Qatar. Yes, we've been talking to the Times chief football writer, Henry Winter, who joined us to react to some of the surprises in Gareth Southgate's England's men's squad and to debunk the concerns of those including in this office I have to say somewhat fickle England fans. What the surprise is really was that we're not talking about the players who've been omitted I'm not trying to work out six of the last seven World

Cups we're always talking about a certain player not being called up despite sort of public and media clamour but this time Southgate surprised us all by being adventurous by picking James Madison the Leicester City number 10 he's a very creative bold player and it's a creative bold move by Southgate he was fairly conservative by nature so I think that's been the real headline of Madison getting called in particularly when he saw some of the headlines this morning speculating that he wouldn't be in the squad. Do you think we could also do a list of who's least knackered out of the squad that's being picked? Because Harry Kane was taken off, wasn't he, in his last game.

Would that have ever been to kind of make a point about this tournament just being a really awkward time? Well, it was a really controversial decision by Antonio Conte, the Spurs manager, to start Harry Kane in a competition last night, which is effectively his club's fourth priority. On the eve, obviously, of the Premier League games this weekend, and doubtless, sadly, we'll probably get an injury there

and the squad will have to be rejuggled. But, yeah, I mean, the players are incredibly well paid and they're very well looked after in terms of sports science in terms of all the sort of the diet everything around them is absolutely elite level um but you know they're like racehorses you know if you over train and overrun them they will eventually tire so it was concerning when conti said well harry k Kane's got fatigue and then you also I'm sure Gareth Southgate was screaming at his television saying why are you starting him so you know it's this all age I mean you've been to past tournaments you know the age of conflict between club versus country so yeah look the players are going out there a little bit

exhausted but you know there are other teams out there as well who've also had heavy workloads for their players. Can we just say a little bit about Gareth Southgate? He's a class act, isn't he, in these interview sessions that he does. And he was asked about inclusivity in relation to Qatar and the LGBTQ rights. And I love this from him, the fact that he said if it wasn't for the strength of that community, we wouldn't be women's Euro champions. I mean, it's good that he acknowledged that. And it just sends a very positive message, doesn't it? He is. He's fantastic on culture.

He's very much on inclusivity, diversity. You see the team. This is something that Southgate's always been involved in. This is not some sort of new work agenda that has just parachuted into him. So, no, he's very impressive like that he's got the culture right but i think what a lot of england fans would say he's got to get his tactics right particularly in the second half yeah well can we just acknowledge that i'm gonna say i'm just gonna say this he's gonna put your neck out i don't think england are gonna win the world oh my god i'm sorry oh my word that's more than i can

take henry over to you how you. How can you say that? I mean, I thought he probably should have gone after the last tournament. His inability to react in the second half to tactical changes. He was outwitted by the Italian coach in the Euros final. But, you know, as you say, the culture is good. The players like reporting for England. I think they'll probably get to the quarterfinals out in Qatar and then they'll run into maybe the French you've only got to look at the quality of the

Brazilian squad in particular to see they've got an unbelievable strength and depth of players and also they've got an outstanding coach I will say with England we have some fantastic players have we actually necessarily got the coach who's going to take them over the line I'm not so sure and who out of that England squad do you think will come back absolutely you know hero of the hour however far we get in the competition i think jude bellingham i think he's just such an impressive individual i think look there are two elements to this world cup clearly it's on the field and off the field and i do think having spoken to some of the players privately and what they've also said publicly is that they will make certain uh standpoints on LGBT issues on migrant

workers rights out there I don't think anyone from the FA or FIFA and certainly not these supposed leaders of the world game like Infantino are going to gag them so they will make their points out there so I think they'll come back with reputation enhanced, particularly if they have spoken out. But I think in terms of players delivery, I think we'll see Jude Bellingham, his cost will probably go up another 30 billion euros from Borussia Dortmund to whoever's going to try

and buy him from Real Madrid, Manchester City or Liverpool. That was Henry Winter, who's laid it on the line. Like myself, he doesn't actually think the England men are going to win. But in a weird way, Fi, I don't really mind because the England women won in the summer. So I've seen England winning something and I feel very relaxed about the whole thing. I know what you mean.

So we've got something tucked in our back pocket already, haven't we? Although I don't want to make light of this tournament in Qatar because, to put it mildly, there are concerns, aren't there? Oh, many long-held concerns. One of the things that will always bemuse me slightly is that we have really ramped up our concern two weeks before the tournament. We've known that the tournament was going to take place for many years anyway. Earlier in the week, we spoke to Kate Mason, a sports broadcaster who, in a new podcast documentary series, has experienced firsthand the human stories behind this year's controversial competition. I mean, there is there's lots of evidence around how the World Cup was acquired by Qatar that suggests that it shouldn't have been possible for this particular country to be hosting what many people think of almost universally is thought of as the biggest sporting event on the planet. resource that they've put into Qatar this is into making PR around reasons why Qatar should have a

chance to host the World Cup and positives around it for me I'm I'm supportive of the idea that the World Cup should go to the Middle East I think one of the problems we have in football generally is that it's quite you know European focused Western. You might even call it tiny but arrogant from that perspective. So that's positive. But unfortunately, the way the way it's been done is I can't see too many positives apart from, I guess, perhaps if people become more aware of the situation out there and some of the things that have gone on in the process of building these stadiums and building the venues that will be hosting all of these fans not just in Qatar I should say but but more broadly around the Gulf as well. Can you tell us a bit about the people who you've managed to talk to for the podcast because I think your access is is quite remarkable. Oh thank you well my goodness we did have we did have some well

I was going to say luck of course it's all a bit of luck it's never luck it's always hard work thank you um so I had lived out there previously I'd lived out there for a couple of years in in light of this knowledge that the world cup would be being hosted there and as I am a football broadcaster I was I was curious to see what I could find out about the place and so as a result I'd made lots of friends across all of these different communities and I suppose being female in some respects a massive disadvantage but in the respect of some of the people we spoke to for the documentary as it turned out kind of amazing because on my on the first night back there um through a friend of a friend they said hey there's because I knew that there was a league of women footballers who

played in education city which is where all of the universities are there's a closed football pitch in education city i.e you can't look through the fencing of it's completely concealed and this is where Qatari female Qatari players play football in a league on certain nights a very few nights because for much of the year it's too hot to play sport outdoors unless you're incredibly hardy um so yeah so we went I went along just on my own with my with my microphone um taken in by an English woman that I knew and I spoke to some of these girls who were not just not just Qataris but from Lebanon and all these various other places that I mentioned and that was you know when you're making your plans to go and you've you've tried to build up for weeks and weeks to figure out who you're going to be able to speak to

that was a serendipity moment of being able to watch this football with these girls, talk about what it meant to them, talk about what the World Cup meant to them. In many cases, it didn't mean a lot. It was, you know, yeah, great. But in 2010, Qatar launched a women's national team and it's basically a fiction. They haven't played since 2015. They've been taken off the FIFA rankings because they don't play.

And they were talking to me about things that I hadn't even really considered from this perspective. Stuff like the players wouldn't have wanted to play in hijab necessarily. So they wouldn't have necessarily been covered day to day. But because many of their teammates were culturally inclined to be covered. They then couldn't film their practices. So some of these girls wanted to get scouted. They had dreams of playing in Europe, and they couldn't record footage of themselves playing. They couldn't be playing in public. And so this is a huge barrier for them to their dreams. Women's rights are clearly an issue here, but also the rights of people who are lesbian or

gay and i think you have spoken to well the first ever qatari able to come out as gay and presumably not someone who lives in in qatar yeah quite right we did dr naz muhammad he's been incredible speaking to um speaking about this in a very detailed way. He lives in San Francisco now. He managed to get actually asylum in America. And he said one of the difficulties was proving that it was a problem to be gay in Qatar. So that's something that I would want you to hopefully listen to the doc, because it's quite a detailed conversation that we have about it.

Sure, don't give away too much of your splendour in this preview, Kate. Just to be clear, there's no way he could carry on living. It's not an option for him to be openly gay in his own country. It's not an option. Yeah. What was so interesting to me, speaking to people in Qatar, speaking to people who were Muslim and living there, not necessarily Qataris, but generally, was actually, and maybe this is naive, I don't know what you two think, but I was surprised by how miles back the conversation about being gay or about the LGBT community is, as in it didn't really exist as a conversation. So it just felt as though the work of someone like Dr. Naz to talk about this and say, guys, look, I am gay

and I've had to move away from home. And at the heart as well, speaking to him, you know, the thought that he'd had to leave the country that he is from, where all his friends are, where his family are, in order to go the country that he he is from where all his friends are where his family are in order to go and be who he he truly is you know that that is huge to to convey that and I think the bravery hopefully means that people can see that that there is a way that they can live the lives that they want to live I'm interested as well, Kate, in the workers who you've spoken to, because so many workers have died in making the infrastructure for this World Cup. The stadium worker you spoke to who was put

on duty for 48 hours straight. Was he still able to work? Was he in his job? Did you were you only able to talk to him because he'd already left yeah exactly I mean there were a number of stories there's been some incredible work done by groups like Equiderm out there to help us to meet people because another one of the big challenges was you don't want to put people at risk so some of these if you think about it being in the country I wouldn't if I was still living there and working there, I strongly doubt that I would have felt comfortable about making a documentary like this

with this level of honesty about the way this country looks to me. And so if you think of me, I'm British, I have a British passport, and the level of support that I would have, hopefully from from Britain if I were to run into any trouble. And then you compare that to predominantly Bangladeshi workers that we spoke to and also some Kenyan workers as well. didn't feel like they would have support and they felt very, very vulnerable to what might happen to them in the process of, you know, trying to speak out for their rights. So that was a story we heard over and over again. It wasn't that people weren't trying to talk about this stuff. It was that it felt blocked off from them deliberately. And the fact that England, we're told,

and I'm not sure that we know this, might wear rainbow armbands. It all seems... Do you know what, Kate? That was a very telling... Well, it's just a bit... It's farcical, isn't it? No, go on.

What were you going to say? Heavy, heavy sigh. It's a farcical, isn't it? No, go on. What were you going to say? Heavy, heavy sigh. It's a farce. I mean, what really concerns me is that I, you know, I love football. Will I sit there and watch it? Probably. I suppose the argument could be, Kate, and I don't know if you'd agree with this, that if Qatar did want the World Cup so it could do some extensive sports washing on its reputation. That's really failed. If you never knew anything about the state before this, you now do and it's

not good. Yeah, that's a great point. And if you think about people perhaps might be a bit more alert to, you know, vast ways of London are also, you know, owned by Qatar money. So that's an interesting point as well, the question about this, this conversation about soft power. You know, that's a good positive angle on it. Ah, I don't know. I mean, I think there's some thought that the point I wanted to make, the point we wanted to make when making this documentary, as I'm sort of breaking out when I'm talking about the way that Qatar society is made up is that it's not all just one thing right and there are these young people in particular who are hoping to change things and are perhaps working away just gently to try and change perspectives now we don't know what will happen but in a way

it may be seen that this is this is fast forwarded that process a little bit and of course when you're making a documentary like this you have to go back to um the qatar government and say oh have you got any have you got any comment for us on this just you know to make sure that we're doing this right and they can point to examples of how for example with amnesty there are there is information out there that says amnesty say that there has been progress made beyond what you've seen in the rest of the gulf do they attribute it to the world cup being there you know it's backwards and forwards but i suppose that is one small positive but look i'm not i'm not trying to say oh yeah it's really good that you know i don't i don't think it is and i don't think the world cup should be there

of course but i what i do want to do if this is people's route into understanding that part of the world, I do want to say that there are people there whose voices you're not hearing. And I hope that we've managed to bring some of those to light. That's the sports broadcaster, Kate Mason. And if you just go to the search engine of your podcast app, your chosen podcast app, and if you just look for Football Ramble, you'll find Kate Mason's podcast. I think that's going to be properly interesting. So what do you think, Fi? Is it coming home? I think it's, I think they're coming home quite early. That's, that's my considered opinion,

but I don't. And mine. I. I wouldn't mind if they do. Is that a terrible thing to say? Because I know that you think that once you start watching the tournament, the sport will properly kick in and take over and you'll want them to go all the way. But at the moment, I'm so reticent about all the other stuff around it, I don't mind if they come home quite soon. I do agree. I can't even pretend to disagree with you.

Anyway, that's it for this bonus ball edition, get it, of Jane and Fee Off Air. We're back with normal, normal stuff Monday to Thursday next week. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought,

hey, I want to listen to this but live, then you can, Monday Monday to Thursday 3 till 5 Embrace the live radio jeopardy Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye