You often hear about ‘legacy’ when international sporting tournaments come around. It’s a weasel word used by the organisers to justify the colossal expense by promising some lasting benefit – which usually comes to nothing. But perhaps with the Qatar World Cup, one of the most controversial in the competition’s history, there may be a worthwhile legacy, though not one the organisers could possibly have anticipated.

Ironically, it is probably the sheer boringness of much World Cup football that has led to so much of the TV coverage focusing on the crowd

For it is being suggested that the scenes of maskless supporters in Qatar’s soccer stadia has helped push the Chinese, suffocating and desperate after repeated lengthy and fiercely enforced lockdowns, to take to the streets and mount the most serious challenge to Xi Jinping’s regime yet seen.

The World Cup seems to be seriously undermining the foundations of the zero Covid policy. On the popular WeChat messaging app on Tuesday an open letter was posted questioning the country’s Covid-19 policies. ‘Audiences at the World Cup are not wearing masks or required to have PCR tests with them. Are they on the same planet we live? Doesn’t the virus hurt them?’ the person asked. The message was quickly removed by the censors. In response to the terrible optics it seems that Chinese TV is trying to edit such scenes by cutting to shots of the coaches instead.

How can it be, some Chinese people appear to be thinking, that such an array of nationalities co-mingling with wild abandon, singing, dancing, and embracing has not led to countless deaths? Qatar even dropped its negative PCR requirement for entering the country at the beginning of November and there is no regular testing to see if you have acquired the disease post arrival. There is plenty of face paint in evidence, but hardly a face mask in sight in the stands in Qatar. Yet, there is no evidence of Covid outbreaks.

Of course, no one is suggesting that the World Cup, widely viewed in football mad China, is more than simply one of many catalysts to the current protests. The death of ten people in a fire in an apartment block in Urumqi City whom, it seems, emergency services were unable to reach due to the enforced Covid security measures, was likely a more powerful trigger. Scenes of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping maskless and relaxed in Indonesia can’t have helped the national mood either. But the World Cup may well have played a significant role, with the joyous, vibrant, maskless exuberance of the fans of all nations providing a vivid and arresting contrast to the grey, grim biosecurity misery endured by so many Chinese.

Ironically, it is probably the sheer boringness of much World Cup football that has led to so much of the TV coverage focusing on the crowd in recent tournaments. With so much at stake many games are nervy and cautious affairs, at least until the fizz is uncorked by the first goal. To liven things up TV producers spend far more time than in regular football scanning the crowd, many of whom seem to be football tourists who treat the tournament as a sort of cavalcade rather than regular fans

For some time now a post tournament feature has been websites and YouTube videos offering compendiums of suspiciously attractive female fans spotted in the stands, who don’t look much like the regular attendees at Anfield, Goodison or Cappielow. It can even kick start a modelling career, as it seems to have done for Croatia’s Ivana Kroll. Social media has only accelerated this trend.

It is not just a chance to dress up, though. Nowhere in the world is there such a vivid and brazen, if perhaps superficial, expression of national identity. The World Cup is a globalist’s nightmare, the only nation state sporting competition that covers the entire planet. Cricket and rugby have only about a dozen serious national teams each. Fifa has 209 members, outdoing the United Nations (193). If you hate flags and national anthems, and nakedly displays of patriotism, then the World Cup is not for you.

With this comes immense soft power. Such is football’s reach and popularity that even the harshest totalitarian regime would struggle to ban it. Even China hasn’t dared.

But the power must be effectively wielded. It is striking that with the exception of the supremely brave Iranian team’s refusal to sing their national anthem, the on-field protests of the players in support of various causes have been risibly ineffective and have almost fizzled out.

Meanwhile, the mask free cavalcade in the stands rolls on. And the spectacle of humans being human, free of restrictions, with no more serious purpose than having a great time, could be far more consequential than anything that happens on the pitch. Which could be the Qatar World Cup’s true legacy.

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