A view of the Education City Stadium that will host matches in the Club World Cup as well as the 2022 FIFA Cup.
Stadium construction is ongoing and massive infrastructure projects such as roadworks and metro lines are also among the preparations for the global sporting showpiece.
As soon as the 1,970 athletes from 208 countries taking part in the the IAAF World Athletics Championships had packed up Sunday, the next event was looming in the form of the inaugural World Beach Games starting Saturday, followed immediately by the congress of the Association of National Olympic Committees.
More important in respect to the World Cup is the holding of the Club World Cup featuring the likes of Champions League winners Liverpool from December 11 to 22 — a dress rehearsal of sorts.
Sebastian Coe, president of the ruling athletics body IAAF, dismissed doubts whether Qatar was the right place to host the track and field showpiece. “Why would it be the wrong place?” Coe asked back, satisfied with good organisation and an air-conditioned stadium and FIFA too is confident of Qatar putting up a great show in 2022 as well as the Club World Cup in December.
“The co-operation with the Qatari authorities is outstanding. We are very confident that the upcoming FIFA events in Qatar will be successful,” Helmut Spahn, FIFA’s German security chief, told DPA.
FIFA said it had inspectors in Qatar over the past fortnight to look at the state of preparations for the Club World Cup and the World Cup.
Khalifa Stadium will be used for both tournaments, and although the set-up for the athletics and football differ, “some of the temporary installations for the athletics championships will be kept and used for the FIFA Club World Cup,” according to a FIFA spokesperson Dahlan al-Hamad, vice-president of the Doha Worlds organising committee. Dahlan also said his team were “in a big co-operation with the 2022 team. They are here with us. We work together hand in hand.”
The heat will not be a problem at the first-ever winter World Cup, for which the whole match-calendar in Europe will be revamped because the conditions made a World Cup impossible at the traditional June/July slot.
Temperatures during the tournament are expected to range between 15 and 24 degrees Celsius, offering “optimal conditions for players and fans,” according to FIFA.
Football is a bigger attraction than athletics as was evidenced by the packed crowd that witnessed the Asian Champions League semi-final between home team Al Sadd and Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal last week.
“We were pleased to see the good atmosphere at the stadium at the AFC Champions League semi-final earlier this week in Doha,” Spahn said.
The club tournament will be played exclusively in Doha at Education City, Khalifa and Jassim bin Hamad stadiums, the first two also being used for the World Cup.
Doha will have eight stadiums at the World Cup, including the 80,000-seat Lusail Stadium currently under construction, and even the distance to the arena furthest away from the capital is a mere 70 kilometres.
Spahn spoke of “a challenge but also a historical opportunity with many positive aspects” while FIFA also noted that, if desired, fans “will be able to attend more than one match per day in 2022” due to the compact nature of the tournament.
