‘Qatar is heaven for fans’
DOHA-BASED Richard Keys and Andy Gray believe that fans travelling to Qatar for next year’s World Cup finals are in for a special treat.
The TV duo are also confident that England’s players will arrive in their best ever condition at a major championships.
Beinsports football hosts Keys and Gray who have been in the Middle East for the past eight years, have witnessed at first hand the building of seven new stadiums to house the finals which will be staged just three months into the 2022-23 Premier League season.
Keys insisted: “For eight months of the year the weather here is absolutely stunning. It will be stunning for the World Cup in November and December – the temperature will be
24C which is cooler than the temperatures at Wembley in the summer for the Euros.
“We won’t see the 29C and 30C that Wembley experienced.”
Gray believes visiting fans are in for an easier time of it than at recent tournaments, and added: “If you are stationed in Doha you will be central to everything. From north to south the biggest distance you would travel would be about an hour. And if you are in Doha the furthest you’d go is 30 minutes.
“The beauty for England is that the players should be at their absolute peak for this tournament.
“They will only have to make two flights – one into the country and one out. They will be at the same hotel, using the same training facilities close by.
“There will be no tiredness from travelling, no tiredness from excessive heat and the players will arrive here three months into the season I think sharper than they have ever been.
“Not ‘potentially’, definitely – they will arrive in better nick than at any other World Cup.”
*Richard Keys and Andy Gray were talking to the Old Spice Boys podcast out on Apple and Spotify and on twitter @theoldspiceboys