The Brazil striker can still win things but his major-chord career is over in the place that made him rich but stole his value
The morning after its seven-game World Cup lifespan was complete, Stadium 974 – the shipping container one, a kind of elite Qatari hipster project, cod-Hackney to go with the cod-Paris – was already being dismantled by men with diggers and grabbers and electric wrenches.
This is the way of things here. Indeed, as the yellow-shirted travellers streamed through the night on Doha’s driverless metro, another Brazil World Cup campaign done in a haze of tears and grief, it was tempting to wonder how long before the men who dismantle things would be out with their wrecking bars, setting about another Qatari World Cup fixture.
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