sport news Doha looks and feels empty and no amount of cash can buy authenticity for the ... trends now
Television executives are not stupid. They know how to make something feel and look right.
That is why the stretch of ground in Doha that stands between the Souq Waqif and its huge adjacent mosque currently caters for a row of seven or eight TV studios.
As the world turns on its televisions to watch the Gulf’s first World Cup over the next four weeks, these are the things they will see as its backdrop.
Yesterday morning, at 11.18am, the second call to prayer of the day rang out across the empty streets and alleyways of a traditional market thought to be at least 100 years old.
But when it stopped, a rather more monotonous, persistent sound took its place. The sound of a cherry-picker putting the final touches to World Cup 2022 decorations on the nearby waterfront.
Doha certainly looks and feels ready for the World Cup but it also looks and feels empty
Doha’s World Cup is not about celebrating its past or its traditions. It’s about a future, a search for global standing. That is why so many millions of pounds have been thrown at a sporting event that already looks and feels like no other.
Qatar had been determined to present the world with something different from the start and here, at last, it is. A World Cup controversially won 12 years ago and subsequently built on exploitation and cruelty begins here tomorrow and the truth is that nobody yet knows how on earth it is going to play out.
Walking around Doha yesterday and taking the city’s superbly efficient subway network to three of the eight stadiums clustered in and around Qatar’s capital was to feel a little like being lowered from the sky into the world’s largest theme park.
Nothing here feels particularly real. Everything has been shined and polished like a new shoe. Across the bay from the old part of town stands the Pearl, a monument to Qatari wealth, its £1,000-a-night hotels pointing skywards. Out of reach to most but not out of sight.
On the Corniche, the long pedestrian walkway that borders the city, workers ambled about looking to pick up litter that simply didn’t exist. Why would it when nobody really seems to be here?
If the world’s football supporters really are on their way to this tiny state that looks from the sky as though it’s about to be nudged into the Arabian Gulf by Saudi Arabia, then they have not arrived yet.
Nothing here feels particularly real - everything has been shined and polished like a new shoe
With temperatures already north of 30°C yesterday morning, a group wearing Argentina shirts sought shade beneath a huge skyscraper carrying an image of their own Lionel Messi. Across the Corniche by the water, a small boy wearing a Brazil shirt kicked a ball about with his father.
In truth, they all looked like they were locals. There was no sense whatsoever that the greatest football
