“WHERE are you really from?” is obviously a question best handled with care but in Qatar it arises all the time out of healthy curiosity. Tunisia, says the waiter. Nepal, says the driver. Philippines, says the hotel front desk.

Qatar has crammed more change into 25 years than any other country on Earth. It started exporting gas, the source of its wealth, in 1997. To enable transition from “an obscure tribe on the outskirts of Arabia” to world power, it brought in migrant workers who now outnumber the 330,000 Qataris by nine to one.

Ethical issues have been well publicised, and so they should be. Anyone who thinks these will end with the World Cup is seriously out of touch with a changing world order in which energy wealth holds sway. For the old colonial powers, the role reversal is spectacular, so get used to the rules.

Change can take place at the pace that a conservative society allows. Liberal priorities should be argued for but cannot be dictated. The basic question about the World Cup in Qatar is whether it contributes to a process of change or is merely cover for something that is irretrievably deplorable.

As a general believer in football as a force for good in the world, a common language that brings people together, I opt for the optimistic former over the cynical latter. The line between “sportswashing” and using sport positively to leverage change is fine but still discernible. Time will tell, but I judge Qatar to be on the right side of it.

Either way, the mistake is to think that football is even relevant to the standards by which Qatar, or any strategically significant state in the region, is otherwise treated. In every other arena, it is business as usual while the ethical dilemma is left to football.

When the Qataris took umbrage over British coverage last week, Rishi Sunak was hastily on the blower to congratulate the Emir “on hosting a successful World Cup” and welcoming “the strong trade and investment relationship between the UK and Qatar, built on solid economic foundations”.

The Qataris have £45 billion of investments in the UK including trophy assets like Harrod’s, the Ritz and a large chunk of British Airways. More critically, they have infinite quantities of gas which the world is queuing to buy, no questions asked.

As a minister, I saw enough to know that relationships in that part of the world involve a lot of wilful diplomatic blindness. To put it another way, an ethical foreign policy is subordinated to cold, lesser-of-evil calculations. Whether right or wrong – and mostly it is justified – that is a reality which football will not disturb.

We enthusiastically promote trade. We supply weaponry in industrial quantities. We overlook behaviour that in other circumstances would be called to account. And none of that is accompanied by even a tiny fraction of the anxieties the World Cup has generated.

Maybe, indeed, it is to football’s credit that it is a channel through which issues can be raised, if not resolved, while in every other form of endeavour, silence is deemed to be the best policy with a phone call from the Prime Minister thrown in if there is the slightest risk of offence.

A couple of weeks ago, the German economy minister went to Doha to sign a 15-year deal for Qatari gas and enthused: “Fifteen years is great. I would not have anything against 20-year or even longer contracts”. Not an ethical cheep was heard, which sums up the double standard that everyone prefers to ignore.

Meanwhile, in spite of many ill wishes, the World Cup has been impeccably successful so far. The organisation is flawless, the infrastructure superb and the atmosphere of international camaraderie uplifting.

The football is pretty good too and Doha has soaked up the tide of humanity that has descended upon it. Huge cohorts drift through the streets and souks until the early hours. Limited access to alcohol means reduced consumption, but that is scarcely a crisis.

The compactness of this World Cup setting has proved to be a virtue. Instead of teams and supporters flying around vast countries or continents, the action is contained within the environs of Doha. Since the stadia, transportation and accommodation are in place, hosting a World Cup in what essentially is a city state has proved perfectly feasible.

Ok, I hear you say, that’s enough good news. What about the serious stuff like gay rights and the conditions of migrant workers? I agree. These are far weightier issues than whether Japan’s second goal should have stood or whether the ball had gone out of play. But these are not football’s issues alone and that is where wider awareness is required.

The UK will continue to engage with Qatar and other Gulf states on the basis of strategic interests, trade and energy demands for at least the next few decades. This will involve ethical compromises which, for most of the time, the vast majority of people will neither know nor care about.

Qatar is a case apart. In an astonishingly short timescale, it has used its vast wealth to make a global impact through sport and media as well as foreign investment on a colossal scale. In doing so, it has invited a degree of scrutiny that should outlive the World Cup, but in a constructive way.

A year from now we will know whether there really is a continuing World Cup dividend in terms, for example, of how migrant workers are treated as Qatar seeks to become an events and tourism destination of admired global standing. They can afford it, so why not do it?

If nothing much changes, those of us who take the optimistic view will have been proven naïve. But it is equally naïve not to recognise that all these other relationships – diplomatic, military, trade, investment, energy – will continue regardless. At least football will have opened a window of opportunity.

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