Sponsored by the Alberta Labour History Institute, this documentary will be screened at Metro Cinema at May 7 at 7 p.m. MT, as part of the Northwestfest — a festival that celebrates documentary filmmaking. Directed by Adam Sobel, the film looks at the workers who are building the venues for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

It would be hard to imagine any Canadian federal, provincial or municipal government readily taking on billions of debt to stage the 2026 tournament without some massive help from the private sector.

Tomer Chencinski is finally going to get his chance to play for Canada.

“We are not in a crisis,” said Blatter in a press conference Monday from FIFA headquarters. “We are having some difficulties.” Blatter spent the better part of 45 minutes ducking and dodging questions from journalists. When two-part questions were asked, he insisted on answering only one. When questions were asked about FIFA’s reputation, he spoke of gambling in the game. When asked about reforming FIFA, he spoke of zero tolerance for abuse of officials on the field.

While the rotten smell left behind by the voting process for the 2018 and, especially, the 2022 World Cups is still strong in FIFA’s Swiss headquarters, there is one bit of good coming out of the Qatar bid. And that’s the continuing rumblings that the tournament will have to be held in January — to give the players and fans a reprieve from the Qatari summers, where temperatures regularly soar past 40 C. Because, once and for all, it would smash the notion of the “international calendar,” a large truck of snake oil that has been pushed onto the world’s footballing community by rich, European clubs.

For all the Canadian soccer fans hoping to make short hops across the border to catch World Cup games in 2022, there is disappointment. The United States’ bid to host the tourney was unsuccessful, as FIFA awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.