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I’m not boycotting it so much as, I don’t have any enthusiasm for it. I think it’s a disgrace from footballing reasons that it’s in Qatar, and the human rights record of that country should have made it a six inch putt that it gets removed from them - but it hasn’t.
I don’t believe in politics mixing with sports, except in the most extreme cases where it necessarily has to. This is one of the reasons - only one of them - why I’m opposed to athletes taking the knee, promoting pride week, being forced to promote pride week, or ripping their football jerseys off to reveal a shirt underneath that promotes some local political cause in their countries. Politics is poisoning everything nowadays. People are doing it wrongly.
But why wasn’t it taken off Qatar, given that 6000 people have allegedly died, and that their religious ethos is too prohibitive to accommodate the influx of so many people with western values? And given that it’s not a country that’s welcoming to football fans from footballing countries, who attend and intend to enjoy the event as they would if it was a great unique football family holiday? That’s the question, and I would say, it’s because the corruption in FIFA allied with an ambitious (and perhaps cynical? Opportunistic?) ideal which says they want to promote and encourage football to spread everywhere. I remember when the World Cup was given to America in 1994, people were aghast and wondering why, but it was to promote the game there, and I would say it was proven success.
But also in the west we have this pompous idealism that states that if we just expose tyrants and bullies to our great successful democratic sporting jamborees, it might encourage them to be more open, inclusive, democratic, etc. This has never happened, however, in fact it only makes them more brazen, and we don’t need to go as far back to the Hitler games to find proof.
The alcohol issue is a big one. There are people who sniff and ask, why do they need alcohol to enjoy the football? To explain this of course would take a while with a person like that, best just to ask why they ask that question. I wonder if alcohol sale is banned in the tennis grounds in Doha when the tennis tournament is on. But football fans will face more than alcohol bans in Qatar. I look forward to seeing how the lads and lasses in their skimpy football supporters costumes get on. Especially the Brazilian honeys. Usually they create a little glamour and laughter, but they’re not in a place that will allow anything that smacks of vulgarity. This is also why Qatar shouldn’t have the World Cup - it isn’t fair on them, in a way. They can’t help but make themselves look terrible to people from countries where freedom to express themselves is taken as read. But that’s only a small reason - football tournaments like this shouldn’t go to countries that pay lip service to football. The United States is a huge sporting country, football was already there and the potential was still huge…
Probably a lot of people go for drinks before and after, but during the game alcohol is banned in the seats in most stadiums. A few years ago, we had access to a posh box at Wembley and even there you can't have alcohol in your seat you had to go inside to drink 
