Fifa World Cup: Qatar’s improbable dream finally becomes reality, as man responsible hails football’s impact
- Journey from bid’s start in 2010 has been anything but smooth for Hassan Al Thawadi and his team
- The tournament gets under way on Sunday, when the hosts take on Ecuador
Sharply dressed and without a hair out of place, Hassan Al Thawadi looked every inch the high-flying executive as he held court in the lobby of Kuala Lumpur’s Shangri-la Hotel.
Affable yet slick and barely in his thirties, the head of his country’s World Cup bid team was telling the planet that Qatar – an oil-and-gas rich state with less than half the population of Hong Kong – was bidding to host the 2022 finals. Every incredulous questioner heard the same response.
“Yes, we’re very serious,” he chimed with a conviction that left no doubt Al Thawadi believed this peninsula jutting into the Gulf had the capacity to host one of the sporting world’s flagship events.
On Sunday evening, 13 years after that bid was launched, Al Thawadi, now the chief executive of the World Cup organising committee, will see that improbable dream become reality, as Qatar kicks off the latest edition of the finals at Al Bayt Stadium against Ecuador.
It has been anything but a smooth journey. Since Qatar was awarded the rights, controversies have come with regularity: the outrage at the December 2010 decision, amid allegations of corruption within FIFA’s decision-making executive committee, was followed by the controversial shifting of the finals from their usual June slot to November.
The tournament became a geopolitical punching bag, with a Saudi Arabia-led blockade impacting on preparations while pressure grew on Qatar to co-host the event as Fifa president Gianni Infantino promoted a failed proposal to consider expanding the number of participants from 32 to 48 nations.
In the meantime, Western media and rights groups have maintained constant attacks on the country’s employment laws and treatment of those who have built the venues and infrastructure at significant cost, both in terms of dollars spent and – more damningly – lives lost.
So, after more than a decade of scandal and acrimony, it is a symbol of the Qataris hardiness, as much as it is FIFA’s dubious decision making, that the tournament is taking place at all in the Gulf nation.