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‘A GAY IN NO MORE’: WILL DAVID BECKHAM’S QATAR ROLE KILL HIS BRAND?
His ma football passns clu Tugay, the San Siro and only g a wter ball when snows. Wherever Fahad, a gay man his 40s, walks his home cy of Doha, om the Qatari pal’s astal promena, known as the Corniche, to the gleamg streets of the super-morn downtown Msheireb district, David Beckham s down om the billboards and the big flashg former England pta, hband to the former Spice Girl Victoria, father to Brooklyn, Romeo, Harper and Cz, is not jt a face of the World Cup kickg off this Sunday, he is the pre-ement figure – a 2022 versn of the 1966 mast World Cup Willie some might be tempted to say, if not somethg tri to be unrstandg about the temptatn posed by the £150m al that Beckham is said to have been offered by Qatar, albe the value of the ntract is disputed.
Two weeks ago, Beckham, donng dark sunglass, posed alongsi the Brish sculptor Hugo Dalton and his stallatn of goln goal posts on Doha’s Lail Cy a jarrg ntrast, Human Rights Watch reported jt a few days before the sunny photoshoot on the sufferg of gay and transgenr people who said they had been taed as recently as October an unrground prison Doha’s Al Dafna district, six south of the goln posts, where they had been varly verbally abed, slapped, kicked and punched until they bled.