Gary Neville launches scathing attack on the English media's coverage of Qatar World Cup

Gary Neville launched a scathing attack on the English media's coverage of the Qatar World Cup whilst working on BeIN Sports.

His comments were geoblocked in the UK by the Qatari's state broadcaster but his full statement has been revealed which sees him attack the UK media.

Despite his calls to spread awareness and help shine a light on the controversies surrounding the World Cup, he still chose to take an extremely lucrative punditry role on the Qatari-based sports channel BeIN Sports.

He's also working for ITV, but his involvement with BeIN has seen people question his integrity and legitimacy.

However, his two-and-a-half minute rant focused on how Britain has portrayed Qatar over its human rights record.

Considering the issues in Qatar, such as the fact homosexuality is illegal in the country, and is punishable by three years in jail as well as the fact that it is unclear how many migrant workers have died building these stadiums - there are plenty of issues that have been well-documented.

Neville told beIN Sports he felt global attitudes had changed in the last week for three reasons - and that England's mood had not shifted towards the matter.

Neville said: "The football is taking over as it always would do and should do - this has happened in previous tournaments by the way, maybe as not as much with the English media as this one, but there was massive negativity before Brazil and Russia and other tournaments with the English press.

"I've never gone to into a tournament where there hasn't been some sort of crisis of some kind with the host nation. It's generally the way we behave in England, I think you know that."

He also claimed that it's very different once when you're on the ground which has helped him to understand the situations a lot better.

"I think there's then an element of, a lot of the English press have never been over here to this country, and it's quite difficult once you're over here and you get to speak to people and learn about what goes on in this region and how things work.

"And not understand that this is, you know, difficult to carry on criticising it when you understand it more and you're here and you feel it on the ground. That's definitely happened."

Alamy

Furthermore, he claims will continue to talk about the wider issues of Qatar, even six or seven weeks after the World Cup ends, once we're back to normality in the familiar feel of club football.

He added that he hopes to continue flying the flag for change and raising issues.

"There is progression in this country because of the scrutiny of football, we're going to keep talking about it. What I'm going to keep doing in seven or eight weeks when we're all talking about the Premier League again in England and no-ones even thinking about Qatar, the migrant workers, and thinking about stadiums and working practices, kefala and LGBTQ rights, women's rights.

"Maybe that's when we should continue shining lights on things in each others' countries when the spotlight is off. That will be really interesting to see if that happens"