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The World Cup’s Carnival Comes at a Cost

The tournament is, at heart, a feeling, and FIFA and Qatar may be forgetting that no amount of spending is a substitute.

What happens when the World Cup is built for selfies, not supporters?Credit...Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via Shutterstock

The good news is that it’s a yes from the gigantic, fire-breathing spider. It is hard, after all, to imagine a World Cup without its finest tradition: 50 tons of decommissioned crane arranged into the shape of a monstrous arachnid, pumped full of highly flammable fuel and then stocked with hopefully less flammable D.