Campaigners urge a boycott of the World Cup because of the host nation’s human rights record, but the tournament goes ahead. We’ve been here before. For Qatar this month, read Argentina in 1978. Then, as now, the world’s most potent sporting festival was marinated in suffering, corruption and death. The bad taste still lingers. Nobody knows exactly how many migrant workers have died building Qatar’s World Cup stadiums and infrastructure. In February last year, the Guardian calculated the number of dead from Nepal, the Philippines, Kenya, Bangladesh and elsewhere to be 6,500. In 1978, General Jorge Rafael Videla’s military dictatorship...