sport news England WAGs win battle of the World Cup hotels with Banana Island resort's ... trends now
The England WAGs already seem to have their towels on some of the best sun loungers in Qatar, contributing to the sense that this World Cup would be a particularly bad one to miss.
Partners of English and French players have booked in at Banana Island, a luxury spot 25 minutes by boat from the Doha seafront, according to the place's sales director. Those with children have their eyes on the biggest chalets which sleep five. Benefits include a helipad, should they prefer that to the motor launch, with white leather seats, complimentary dates and cold flannels.
Those £6,000 a night chalets, built on stilts which sit in the Arabian Sea, won't offer total escape from hoi polloi.
Anyone can catch the boat and pay £100 to enjoy the resort's pool and beach. But with a cinema, a surf pool with a wave machine and scuba diving courses, it all rather contributes to the sense that England's partners are well ahead of the rest when it comes to the accommodation quest for Group B.
This is the luxurious setting where the England's partners will stay in Qatar for the World Cup
The sea chalets will provide a picturesque setting for the WAGs attending the tournament
Gareth Southgate's players have bagged arguably the best base of the lot, escaping the traffic and high rises of Doha for the cool class of a hotel converted from former pearl fishermen's chalets, with thick heat-resistant walls, in the traditional souk district at Al Wakra, upcoast from Doha.
There will be no pictures in the newspapers of Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Co on an inflatable unicorn in this place. They've never installed a swimming pool there because they want to preserve its status as a 'heritage property' — a remnant of the days just 70 years ago, before their lucrative oil and liquefied petroleum gas when Qatar was just a small stretch of sand on the edge of the Arabian Sea.
But the five-star Tivoli hotel, built on the beach, will keep it real for Southgate's players. They will wake to see the ancient wooden beams of the one-time cottages over their head and watch camels go by if they decide to eat at the array of seafront restaurants which are a few minutes' walk from their rooms.
The old souk market adjoins the hotel with a fleet of gold buggies on hand to take in the gold and bird markets. Southgate will be pleased to know that hotel staff do the driving.
The England team will shy away from Doha and will stay in the swish five-star Tivoli Hotel
The hotel will be closed from the end of October to prepare to welcome the team, at which stage there will no longer be a separate dining area for those smoking a shisha pipe. Intricate work to clean the tile mosaic at the communal fountain where the players can lounge was seen by Sportsmail last week. The most expensive rooms here usually cost £250 a night.
This felt a lot less last-minute than the scene around Wales' newly completed team hotel in the skyrise West Bay, which is not yet open and located in the middle of little less than a building site.
The Delta City Centre hotel has been fully furnished and is a short half-hour drive east from the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium where Wales have the advantage of playing all their group games.
But unless there is a rapid conclusion to building work, the players will be greeted by diggers, dug-up roads
