FIFA and Qatar criticised over LGBTQ rights and worker safety before World Cup draw

World Cup host Qatar and FIFA received scathing criticism from within soccer on Thursday, a day before the tournament’s draw.

On their own territory. In their own house. By a member of soccer's extended family.

The president of Norwegian soccer — one of the few women ever to lead a FIFA member federation — stepped up on the stage at the governing body's congress to air her concerns at the same venue that will host Friday's draw.

Lise Klaveness, a judge and former national team player, spoke about Qatar's record of protecting the rights of migrant workers — who have built tens of billion of dollars of projects needed for the World Cup — and its criminalization of homosexuality.

It was a rare show of dissent and tension in the typically tightly scripted annual meeting of soccer's 211 member countries.

Klaveness targeted issues that have dogged Qatar and FIFA’s controversial choice of the Middle Eastern country for more than a decade only three weeks after she was elected in Norway with a mandate to pressure the World Cup organizers.

“In 2010, the World Cup was awarded by FIFA in unacceptable ways with unacceptable consequences,” Klaveness, who is gay, said in a six-minute speech. “There is no room for employers who do not secure the freedom and safety of World Cup workers. No room for hosts that cannot legally guarantee the safety and respect of LGBTQ+ people coming to this theater of dreams."

FIFA had worked this week in Doha to keep the Norwegian's speech off the main Congress agenda, and then gave the floor to rebuttals from a Latin American soccer official and the head of Qatar’s organizing committee.

“This is not the right forum and not the right moment,” Honduras soccer federation general secretary Jose Ernesto Mejia said in