The house is small, but THE WALLET is big (Last tango)

“I think that in the days I was in Doha I didn’t walk more than four blocks in total, to go anywhere I took a taxi,” says Peruvian colleague Luis Enrique Negrini, from Ovación radio. And he explains: “The heat is so overwhelming that you cannot be in the street, when it reaches forty degrees your cell phones are blocked, I carry four with me and all four are dead.” Negrini went to the country that will host the World Cup accompanying Peru in its fateful playoff against Australia.

In turn, his compatriot Omar Ruiz de Somocurcio, Director of Sports for Panamericana Televisión, was surprised by such a hostile temperature: “It is extreme heat, but without sun, very strange, it is always cloudy, as if there were a storm and it was going to to rain. I think that’s why you don’t see people on the streets, the buildings are imposing, but you don’t see anyone. In June it’s like that, you go from the hotel to the stadium or wherever you have to go, and when you leave you go back to the hotel. There is no other. In the stadium it is not a problem because everyone is refrigerated at 23 degrees, you have a wonderful time. Even when you arrive, approaching about three meters from the entrance you already feel a cool breeze, due to the air conditioners. Under each seat there are one or two air conditioning vents. But they say that in November and December, when the World Cup arrives, the temperature drops a lot and it’s nice.”

The weather forced to play the World Cup on an atypical date

According to the tradition born in 1930, every four years, between June and July, the planet is focused on the World Cup. Today we should have prepared ourselves to see maybe Ecuador-Netherlands, England-USA or France-Denmark. But no, nothing. The great success of Fifa regarding the 2022 World Cup is having delayed it six months due to the weather. At first it was thought that such a change would be impossible, now it is seen that it is not serious. If football survived the pandemic, everything is possible.

(Also read: Tour de France 2022: what are the three Colombians for? Analysis)

“When the time comes, Qatar will be very well prepared and it will surely be an extraordinary World Cup, a super world cup due to technology, stadiums and because it is a new city, which grows every day and in five months, at the speed of construction. , everything will be much better, they have thought of every detail”, predicts Somocurcio.

Is everything as ultragalactic as it seems, we ask. “Huuummm… no, I didn’t see it that way. Yes, very developed, the down town of Doha, with those impressive buildings, is impressive, although there are also poor sectors, hidden, but there are, surely where the Indian workers live, there are hundreds of thousands. The stadium where we went is refurbished, beautiful on the outside, comfortable on the inside, but I would say normal”.

One of the coliseums will be dismantled at the end of the Cup, the others will serve to develop communities around it. And the 32 training centers built – one for each national team – will become sports complexes or recreation areas. And the fan fests will be set up for the fans who arrive. “There are gigantographs and allusions to the World Cup everywhere, there is a lot of talk about it, it is installed.” And they know what it is: the state of Qatar owns Paris Saint Germain, which has three of the aces of football: Messi, Neymar and Mbappé.

A World Cup concentrated in very close stadiums

When Somocurcio says “it is a city” he is referring to Doha, the capital of this mini-state that stands out like a mushroom in the Persian Gulf. Doha will be the epicenter of all World Cup activity. Five of the eight stadiums that will host the tournament are within or on the outskirts of Doha, just minutes from the string of skyscrapers that rise up in front of the bay. And the remaining three are located “a little further”, about half an hour by highway. But it will not be necessary to drive, the Qatari government invested 48,000 million dollars to build the subway, which leads to the gate of the eight stages. “The subway is fabulous, brand new. Now it was empty, I guess during the World Cup it will be full. It works perfectly, it’s luxurious, everything goes underground, even when it goes out into the desert. And it is very cheap, for one dollar and sixty a day you can travel as many times as you want”, explains Omar, who already plans to return, although Peru is not present.

However, those who go to the World Cup, be it tourism or work, must be equipped. “There aren’t many shops, luckily I found a mini-market and I was able to buy some things, like chips, cookies, candy, a drink. Eating or drinking in hotels is almost prohibitive. A small beer costs fourteen dollars; a soda, seven; a plate of food, forty-five. The prohibition of alcohol is not like that, you can drink alcohol, but there are special spaces for that in the hotels”, adds Negrini.

(Also: The tennis player who overcame anorexia to be among the best in the world)

Despite the high prices, the Qatari will know about the devastating force of football. If 16,000 Peruvians came to support the Bicolor against Australia, a human avalanche will fall on them in November, when the party begins. Qatar has 2.6 million inhabitants and will surely receive a million and a half visitors. In the second phase of ticket sales, one million two hundred thousand have already been dispatched. And in successive windows the remaining million will come out. In total there will be a little more than 3 million seats, but a third is kept by Fifa for protocol, sale to associations and delivery to their sponsors. There were 40 million requests for tickets, 17 million in the first sales phase and 23 million in the second. “I think the request is a record,” said Hassan Al-Thawadi, secretary general of the tournament’s organizing committee, surprised.

How to do with so many guests…? There will be apartments for rent, thousands of tents will be set up for accommodation and there are already cruise ships anchored in the bay that offer a cabin, three meals a day and fun in exchange for 4,000 dollars for the 28 days of the event. They will be invaded, but somehow they are used to it. Of those 2.6 million inhabitants, only about 250,000 are Qataris; the rest, foreigners who have gone to work. And, in addition, it was the objective sought when the ambitious candidacy was presented. The 200,000 million dollars that the emirate will invest in the World Cup are intended for that, to put Qatar on the map of international consideration, to give its name prestige, to increase and diversify its businesses, not just oil and gas. It is the bet that will divide the country’s history into four: before and after discovering oil (in 1940), before and after the 2022 World Cup. What the very rich Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Asian States could not, the small next door neighbor: having a World Cup, the greatest attraction of humanity. The first Arab and Muslim nation to do so. And in the election it was taken from none other than the United States and Australia. Qatar fits 790 times in the United States and 668 in Australia. He is a flyweight who sent Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali to the canvas, both of them together…

Florentino Pérez wanted to snatch Mbappé from them. He thought they were an easy rival…?

last tango…

Jorge Barraza
For the time
@JorgeBarraza OK