‘Qatar World Cup presents many opportunities’

Dubai: On December 2, 2010, a historic event occurred for Middle Eastern football when Fifa awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, who beat the UAE by 14 votes to eight.

Qatar became the smallest nation, both by relative population and by area, ever to have been awarded a Fifa World Cup.

Since then several issues have surfaced, threatening to throw preparations by the future hosts of football’s biggest event into turmoil.

Prominent among these were allegations of corruption among senior Fifa officials, prompting Fifa Vice-President Jack Warner to term the Qatar 2022 World Cup as “bought” through bribery.

The whistle-blower [Phaedra Al Majid] has retracted her claims of bribery and Fifa has gone on record to state that it has a letter from her saying the claims were false.

Qatari officials have time and again reiterated that they have done no wrong.

Hassan Al Thawadi, the Secretary-General of the 2022 Supreme Organising Committee, has gone on record to rubbish all such claims.

Qatar has also faced widespread criticism over the practicality of staging a World Cup there during summer, when temperatures could touch 50 degrees centigrade.

The competition is scheduled to take place in June-July, and although proposals have been made for a winter season, Al Thawadi insists that Qatar is in a position to overcome the challenge of the weather and other associated problems.

In fact, speaking to Gulf News, Al Thawadi says Qatar has managed to turn the negatives into positives so that the entire Arab world and the Middle East will benefit from the World Cup.

What sort of benefits can you see in Qatar playing host to the Fifa 2022 World Cup?

Today the world understands the Middle East but not completely. Having the World Cup in Qatar will ensure the spotlight will be on the Middle East. And as it starts getting closer to the World Cup, people will start understanding our culture a lot more and even better. Take Germany hosting the Fifa World Cup in 2006, for example. Did it occur to you that before that Germany was viewed differently by people? People did not see Germany as a tourist destination or as a friendly and warm welcoming place. Guess what? The 2006 World Cup came and went, and now people view Germany as a nice place to go and visit.

South Africa is another successful example after it hosted the World Cup in 2010. People of the world did not understand what South Africa was all about prior to the tournament. They were apprehensive [about going there]. But people who went to South Africa saw for themselves [what a nice place it is], even visited neighbouring countries and got a fair idea of what it is like to be on the African continent. They saw Africa as a viable destination for vacations. Many of my personal friends who went to South Africa for the World Cup have since then visited again for vacations. So the first positive aspect for us is that the World Cup will shed light on what is good about our country and break a lot of the stereo-types about our place. It will change the concept the world has of the Middle East.

How will the World Cup benefit the sports industry in the Middle East overall?

The sports industry for us is in its infancy here. There is no doubt it is developing, and there are a lot of great initiatives such as the Dubai Sports Council and so on. But still, it is at an early stage. The World Cup will be an opportunity and a catalyst at the same time for this region to develop in this sphere. I am not saying the World Cup is the solution; it is merely an opportunity [for us to improve]. And it is the responsibility of Qatar, to start with. It is also the responsibility of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco and all the countries in the Middle East to make the most out of the World Cup. We will all have to work together to make sure the positive effects cascade down into the entire region.

There has been apprehension about the weather being the greatest disadvantage. Would it not be better to have a December/January World Cup?

Well that depends on how you look at it. From a legacy perspective, hosting the World Cup is a great opportunity because it pushes us towards making sure our cooling technology is robust and functional. And the wider application of it is that the legacy it will leave behind after that. No other nation that used to have weather as an obstacle will be prohibited from hosting major events. It will open up the door to about two-thirds of the world. Today, when you look at the weather, you are effectively forgetting two-thirds of the nations of the world. But with the cooling technology coming into effect, two-thirds of the world will get the chance to host similar events in future.

Is it realistic to expect you to have this cooling aspect through the entire fabric of the venues, including practice pitches, fan zones, etc?

Have you ever been to the Al Sadd Stadium in Doha? When you go there, what you experience is an open-air stadium not covered in any way. And you can use the cooling technology to the maximum when needed, no matter how hot it is. Now go back five to ten years and people would not have talked about all this being possible. Today, all this is possible with the technology we have at our disposal. Technology has evolved at such a fast pace that things that you did not expect to have are here. This cooling system is not just a reality, but it is the norm today.

How exactly will the cooling technology function?

There are many different ways of achieving that. You have passive cooling systems, which is what Masdar City [planned project in Abu Dhabi] uses through passive cooling architecture to create a cooling system. And, in addition, there is active cooling technology as well. And when you combine both of them, they create the environment that you need.

What exactly drove you towards all this?

Our inspiration is human nature. There is no cap on the innovative nature of humanity and that’s what our nature is as well. We have Sharif City in Qatar that uses passive cooling architecture and technology just like Masdar does. The innovative opportunities are there. The technological bent is there and the investment is also there. Once all that is there, then there will be no obstacle that will be too hard to overcome.