World Cup 2022 host Qatar has given the clearest indication yet that LGBT fans will be welcome, engaging with gay supporters as it hosts the Club World Cup — despite criminalising homosexuality. Organisers of the 2022 soccer spectacle travelled to Britain in recent months to meet Liverpool fan clubs including the side’s gay supporters’ group, individuals briefed on the meeting have told AFP. Paul Amann, founder of Liverpool’s LGBT supporters’ club Kop Outs, then undertook a fact-finding mission to Doha along with his husband in November at the invitation of the World Cup organisers. “I’m very satisfied that their approach is to provide an ‘everyone is welcome’ ethos that does include respect, albeit through privacy,” he told AFP. “I’m not sure if rainbow flags generally will ever be accepted ‘in-country’, but maybe in stadia.”