“Everything is ready (for) the best World Cup of all time,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino told a press conference on Monday.
The last of the eight stadiums was inaugurated at the beginning of September and the base camps await the 32 qualified teams, starting with Japan on November 7. But, in the streets decorated with the colors of the tournament and in many towers, work continues day and night.
Air-conditioned stadiums, hundreds of daily flights to transport supporters, flouted rights of migrant workers and LGBTQ people… Critics are also legion, relayed by NGOs, politicians and Western media, some calling for a boycott.
With more than one million visitors and five billion viewers expected, the first football World Cup in an Arab country and in the Middle East was to be a formidable instrument in the service of the reputation of the small Gulf emirate.
The rich gas state has not skimped on spending, devoting 6.5 billion dollars to its stadiums, 36 billion to its metro, not to mention the construction of numerous hotels and the extension of its international airport.
The comparison with previous editions is “unfair”, however tempers Danyel Reiche, in charge of a research project on the World Cup at Georgetown University in Qatar. He recalls that “a large part of the infrastructure was already part of a development plan for 2030”.
– “Rectify things” –
Since the awarding of the tournament at the end of 2010, the Qatari authorities, the organizers and Fifa, the governing body of football, have above all had to justify themselves on a myriad of apparently trivial subjects (lack of sports culture or supervision of sale of alcohol) or essential (accusations of corruption to obtain the organization of the World Cup or call to set up a compensation fund for site workers).
“It’s been twelve years since workers and their families were compensated for deaths, injuries and unpaid wages. Too many deaths have gone uninvestigated (…). We we can at least rectify things before the World Cup”, pleads Rothna Begum, of the NGO Human Rights Watch, to AFP.
On Monday, Infantino praised Qatar’s “revolutionary reforms which, in recent years and for years to come, are improving the lives of thousands of workers” and hammered that “everyone” would be “welcome, regardless of origin, background, religion, sex, sexual orientation or nationality”.
The national media, closely linked to power, carried out a concerted attack on the critics about ten days ago. The Arabic-language newspaper Al Sharq, for example, believes that there is a “systematic conspiracy” of the media in many European countries, “while these media have forgotten the miserable conditions suffered by workers in Europe”.
Met in the very touristy Souk Waqif, Yasmian Ghanem, a Qatari golfer, nevertheless assures that “the supporters will have a lot of fun” and that “it will be a pleasant experience for everyone”. Aware of the challenge, Hani El-Keridi, Egyptian tourist guide, learns “a lot to be able to be an ambassador of the State of Qatar”.
– Eighth goal –
In Europe, the Qatari selection, automatically qualified for its first World Cup, has been training almost behind closed doors since June, as South Korea, semi-finalist at home in 2002, did.
For striker Akram Afif and his teammates, winners of the Asian Cup of Nations in 2019, to finish in one of the first two places in group A, where the Netherlands, Senegal and Ecuador will also meet and thus reaching the round of 16 would be a success.
However, their last friendlies in September were not very encouraging, with defeats against the Croatia U23 team (3-0), Canada (2-0) and a draw against Chile (2-2).
“We are fully aware of our need to develop certain tactical and technical aspects which did not go as we wished,” admitted Spain’s Qatar coach Felix Sanchez during a one-time public training session in Doha in early October. .
On the lawns trodden by Al-Annabi (the nickname of the selection taken from the burgundy color of the jersey) as under the palm-shaped lampposts of the emblematic Corniche of Doha, it is time for the final adjustments. For the security forces of Qatar but also reinforcements from foreign countries, it will be for example a final exercise of five days from Sunday.
