No disagreement on the moral horror and practical absurdity of the Qatar World Cup, but I feel like this bleeds into a denigration of the international game that I hear a lot from big English club fans and I very much disagree with.
Club and International football are both great and need to find a way to coexist. Maybe that means less international football, but WCQ are essential.
During a global pandemic, its absurd. There's just no way to practically allow them to coexist without greatly distorting both competitions. Nations in red zones whose players don't report because its a global health crisis and doing so jeopardizes their employers are at a competitive disadvantage. Clubs who employ players who do report to red zones because they feel an obligation to do so are at a competitive disadvantage.
The responsible thing for any real governing body in this situation would have been to work with the leagues and FAs to remove the international breaks from the season, accelerate league schedules to conclude a little sooner, give the players a rest, conduct quick fire WC qualifiers in the summer, gove the players a rest, have the first part of next season, then break for the WC.
For once the universe delivered a break - the insanely stupid Qatar winter WC gave FIFA maximum flexibility to adapt the tournament around a global pandemic. And, in their finest fashion, they managed to completely fuck that opportunity up by just pretending the global pandemic didn't exist.
Seriously. Fuck FIFA. If that means the end of international football, so be it. It ain't worth it.