I
t’s noon on a Monday in December but
it feels like a British summer’s day. The
temperature is 23C, there’s scarcely
a cloud in the sky and the grass is as
green as on the first day of Wimbledon.
Looking out from the 37th floor of
Al Bidda Tower over Doha’s Corniche,
I can see new football stadiums in
every direction — Khalifa, Stadium
974, Lusail. Standing next to me is
Hassan al-Thawadi, the man in charge
of the biggest and most controversial
event this year, the World Cup in
Qatar, which kicks off in just ten
months’ time. “Any nerves?” I ask him.
“Definitely,” he replies.
The 43-year-old Qatari has good reason
to be apprehensive. From the moment back
in 2010 that Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president,
announced Qatar had won the right to host
the tournament, it became the most
troubled sporting event since the 1980
Moscow Olympics, which some western
nations boycotted after Russia’s invasion of
Afghanistan. Many wondered how such a
small country that had never competed in
a World Cup had managed to win the secret
ballot to host it. How could players compete
in 50C summer temperatures, critics asked.
This newspaper soon revealed that
Mohamed bin Hammam, the country’s top
football official, used secret slush funds to
make dozens of payments totalling more
than £3.8 million to senior officials in world
football to create a groundswell of support
for the emirate. A 2014 probe into the
corruption ordered by Fifa and conducted
by a lawyer cleared Qatar of wrongdoing
— but an indictment lodged by US
prosecutors last year alleges that three Fifa
executive committee members received
payments to back Qatar’s bid. After the
graft was exposed, human rights abuses
were revealed, notably the exploitation of
migrant labourers, that still persist today.
Thousands have died building stadiums
and infrastructure, critics say.
Qatar bid to host the tournament
“to introduce our beautiful country and
the Arab world to billions of people”,
Thawadi tells me on the first day of a
week-long visit to the emirate. I’ve travelled
to Doha to see the stadiums and
infrastructure, visit the labour camps and
talk to the executives in charge of the first
World Cup to be held in the Middle East.
To welcome the world, the government
is spending £5.2 billion on seven new
stadiums and another £150 billion on
whizzy transport and general infrastructure.
The total bill comes to £450,000 per
Qatari, but that’s not a huge reach. Qatar’s
vast gas reserves — the third largest in the
world — and tiny native population of
350,000 make it the wealthiest country on a
per capita basis. GDP per head is more than
£400,000. The UK figure is £30,000.
If splashing pennies from heaven were
the benchmark of success, the country —a peninsula the size of Yorkshire in the
Arabian Gulf, 250 miles west of Dubai —
would already have lifted the 18-carat gold
trophy. The stadiums are among the finest
ever built. The 90,000-seat Lusail is a
similar shape to Manchester City’s Etihad
ground but almost twice the size, and its
lattice walls, designed by Sir Norman
Foster + Partners, look as great when lit up
at night as Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena.
Al Bayt stadium, where I watched Qatarbeat Iraq 3-0 in the Arab Cup in December,
resembles a giant Bedouin tent, complete
with carpeted interior walls. A huge flaming
torch welcomes fans. Every game will look
fantastic on television.
The ruling al-Thani family wants to do
more than put on a good show, though. It
hopes to use the biggest global event in
history to take place in the Middle East —
and the biggest sporting event post-Covid
— to enhance Qatar’s status and foster
East-meets-West dialogue through “the
openness and tolerance of the hospitable
Qatari people”, as the emir, Sheikh Tamim
bin Hamad al-Thani, puts it. It’s part of a
multibillion-pound programme of spending
on sport, education, the arts and media —
the government funds the Doha-based Al
Jazeera news network — to position Qatar
as the mature, responsible face of the Gulf,
somewhere between racy Dubai and
conservative Saudi Arabia.
It’s not going well. Qatar is struggling
to put the beautiful game ahead of the
ugliness surrounding the bid process and
human rights abuses. Newspapers have
reported that official records indicate
more than 6,500 migrants who worked
in Qatar from 2010-20 died, many of them
construction workers. Qatar disputes the
figure. Whistleblowers who have leaked
evidence of human rights abuses protest
they have been detained in an effort to
silence or intimidate them. Some
journalists flying in to report on the
conditions in labour camps have been
arrested and held for hours. One reporter
found workers who toiled all summer in
direct sunlight and had to use their
drinking water to cool their burning feet.
Managers of clubs in Europe where
most of the top international stars play are
unhappy about the interruption to their
domestic season — Qatar 2022 became
the first winter World Cup after Fifa
acknowledged the heat would make
a summer competition impossible. Qatar’s“Everybody’s welcome,” says Hassan
al-Thawadi, in charge of delivering the
Qatar 2022 tournament, but fans must
resist any public displays of affectionLeft: fans won’t have
far to travel between
matches. Above left:
David Beckham with
the emir’s sister,
Sheikha al-Mayassa
bint Hamad bin
Khalifa al-Thani,
head of Qatar
Museums12(^34)
5
6
(^78)
40 MILES
DOHA
HAMAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Q ATA R
SAUDI
ARABIA
Q ATA R
STADIUM CAPACITY
1 AL BAYT 60,
2 LUSAIL 90,
3 EDUCATION CITY 40,
4 AHMAD BIN ALI 40,
5 KHALIFA INT’L 40,
6 STADIUM 974 40,
7 AL THUMAMA 40,
8 AL JANOUB 40,
ABU DHABI
DUBAI
10 • The Sunday Times Magazine