The Al Bayt Stadium is an incredible sight but supporters might struggle to get there.
When you fly into Qatar, you sweep down through a gleaming arrivals hall and out to your very cheap taxi to the city centre of Doha for the 2022 World Cup.
The route is picked out in a rainbow of glowing pillars of light adorned with Arabic lyrics, and the highway itself is wide and new.
Centre of Doha
You won’t have too long to enjoy it because, conveniently enough, the journey from Hamad International airport to the centre of Doha is about 20 minutes by car.
Alternatively, you could use the Metro. Follow the Red line to the stop called DECC and in 45 minutes you will be in the heart of West Bay at the City Center Mall.
If you can see Qatar at all in your mind’s eye, it is the skyline of West Bay that you will probably picture. A collection of glittering high rises, clustered along the shorefront Corniche. Each, if you glance back, looks eerily similar to famous buildings from across the world. Is that… the Gherkin? And a pocket Empire State Building?
2022 World Cup
In late November you can take a stroll in relative comfort. The 77,000 at the opening of the 2022 World Cup Final venue Lusail Stadium last month were not so lucky – 35 degrees is no temperature to be walking for an hour with members of your young family, especially when there was no water available to them after half-time.
The 77,000-capacity Lusail Stadium will host this year’s World Cup final
The further north you come to Al Bayt, the most distant World Cup stadium, all of 60 kilometres from the airport but bafflingly unsupported by the brand new metro service that opened in 2019. Organisers say shuttle buses will be provided but with cars still by far the best way to travel around Qatar, and no transport stress tests possible before November, you worry about how the roads will cope.
Al Bayt is set in a lush green park, ringed with tasteful lighting, and a few food outlets, all near a cluster of buildings housing families of office workers brought here by their jobs. When a country submits a bid to Fifa to host a World Cup, they are analysed in a Bid Evaluation Report. It features an on-site inspection to assess how far the candidate can provide what they have proposed.
A general view inside the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, Qatar (Picture: Getty Images)
According to Qatar’s bid, they nominated seven host cities for their 2022 World Cup, listing population figures for four that would genuinely class them as cities. It is unclear where the numbers came from, given geographical monitoring cites only two places in Qatar that might conform to city status – the second of which, Al-Rayyan, is effectively a suburb of Doha.
Why is this important? Does it matter to the travelling fan that Qatar is a place of only a single city if it has got a convenient airport?
In addition to everything else, it means the biggest sporting event in the world is being held somewhere without the capacity. Yes, Qatar is half the size of (the classic unit of measurement) Wales, but more than that, if you have read this far, you’ve travelled the whole country with us. From the centre of Doha to the suburbs.
Qatar is gearing up and ready to host crowds coming together for the football tournament.
At the risk of stating something unbelievably obvious, 1.2 million people is a huge number to absorb. Single cities at the previous World Cup were overwhelmed when hosting fans of just three countries. Here all 32 will be packed together, with no release valve, in a country unused to dealing with crowd control.
There are smart museums, ‘Bedouin style’ desert accommodation, and alcohol on specific sites and in stadiums. But if you are not watching a game and you’re not much into sudokus I’m not sure what to recommend. There is a month to go, and the ‘fan park’ at Al Bidda – due to host 40,000 a day – is all scaffolding and quiet contemplation.
The food festival along the shore started recruiting suppliers in August. If you have a food truck and you want to serve 2022 World Cup fans, great news: the tender process is still open until the end of the week.
The 2022 World Cup can be one of the most uplifting moments in the collective experience. I love it. It is supposed to be fun and life-affirming.
The football-obsessed Middle East has waited too long for their chance to host. But even with blank cheques, a 12-year lead-up and the labour practices we’ll talk more of, Qatar’s challenge of building a World Cup from scratch looks to me to have been too great and despite that the country itself is spectacular. The centre of Doha is lush as Dubia and perhaps a little less pretentious.
The sports broadcaster, a regular on BBC’s Fighting Talk and Final Score and host of The Drop-In from the Football Ramble, has taken to Qatar to find out how ready the tiny nation is to host the World Cup.
MORE: FIFA World Cup 2022: Everything we know about the football tournament in Qatar
With a month to go Al Bidda fan park is all scaffolding and quiet contemplation.