Gold trains, no kissing and plenty of beer
What a World Cup in the desert city barely the size of Manchester will really be like for fans. And don’t mention the human rights
WHEN you have completed the outward leg of the £1,000 Qatar Airways flight to Doha seven months from now, there will be an immediate sense of how a Gulf state with cash beyond belief can buy whatever it wants. You will walk past a Harrods store at Hamad International Airport terminal because Qatar owns that London establishment, too.
The World Cup is so fundamental to the state’s obsessive desire to be recognised and liked that everything and anything they could possibly build is in place, at a cost of around £5.3billion. So beyond the arrival halls, blanketed with the images of Neymar, David Beckham and other tools of the Qatar promotional machine, you will take the ‘red line’ of the shiny new Metro system out of the airport and into central Doha, for the cost of a £2 day pass.
Cleaning staff will flood the stations to make sure the wide, bright thoroughfares — deserted until now — are immaculate. There are reserved ‘gold’ carriages for rich Qataris and officials on hand to ensure ordinary people do not enter them. Good luck enforcing that when Mexico and Argentina play each other.
There are five-lane motorways to stadiums, which are set within manicured grounds. There are some of the most sophisticated air conditioning systems in the planet within those stadiums, designed to allow Qatar to host a summer football tournament, before FIFA decided that was madness. As it is, the November and December temperatures will feel like a decent June day in the UK. Occasional rain is even possible.
There are hotels of unimaginable luxury, such as The Torch, with its panoramic rooftop views across flat desert land. Alcohol will be freely available in them and in fan parks. Talk of Qatar being a dry state has been overblown. One of the western hotels even offers the novelty of pulling your own pint.
But the overwhelming sensation will be one of confinement — claustrophobia, even — as 32 teams are squeezed into a tournament staged in a city which, by a measure of km sq, is only slightly bigger than Manchester. The entire tournament will be staged in a strip of Doha 46 miles in length. In some cases, it will be just about possible to get to all four of the staggered fixtures — 1pm, 4pm, 7pm and 10pm kick-offs — scheduled each day.
There is nowhere near enough hotel capacity, so fans will be crammed into tented villages, apartments and two cruise liners, which will take 4,000 people each. Glastonbury and the Coachella festival in California are thought to have offered advice to Qatar on how to create the tented facilities. But what might sound bohemian certainly will not be.
Open demonstrations of affection between couples are against the law in Qatar, and LGBT couples will feel acutely aware of that. Homosexuality is also illegal. Divulging details of your sexuality to a stranger is not advised.
For the millions who have known it, the World Cup experience has always entailed watching one game and spending the rest of the time drifting around the sights, savouring the build-up or aftermath. But Doha has limitations which come with its size and lack of history. In the Fifties, it was a speck in the desert, barely bigger than a village.
There is no abundance of public spaces, surprises, spontaneity, or streets with local people in them. The touristique Souq Waqif, with market stalls and benches, provides unspoilt authenticity, though it takes five minutes to walk its length.
What will not be on show is the sight which has characterised Qatar for any who have visited during the years of preparation for the tournament — the migrant workers who have toiled under a savage sun to get the city ready. Hundreds of them have been told they are being sent out of Qatar in August — placed, they have heard, on five months’ unpaid leave. The Qatari government insists only those involved in road construction are being cleared out. Workers say it is far more than that. Only gardeners and cleaners will be seen.
Qatar Airways exudes the optimism of a nation which secured the tournament against every expectation, offering packages allowing guests to stay up to 13 nights and watch four matches — which would entail a lot of free time in the middle of nowhere. The minimum cost is a cool £3,000.