By Kareem Fahim and Steven Goff
Doha, Qatar – The president of Fifa, soccer's global governing body, was unequivocal. “Qatar is ready,” Gianni Infantino said this week, addressing one of the central concerns about the approaching World Cup: that the host country, the smallest ever to stage the tournament, would buckle under the weight of global scrutiny and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of fans.
“Over the years, Qatar told the world to expect amazing, and looking around the country now, we can see that Qatar has delivered amazing,” he said, in recorded remarks played at a news conference in Doha on Monday.
With a month to go until the first match, though, preparations are still a work in progress.
The backbone of the tournament infrastructure – eight stadiums and an extensive metro system that will deliver fans to the matches – is ready, officials insist.
But many other parts of Qatar remain under construction, draped with scaffolding or hidden behind screens, while some facilities critical to the visitor experience, including fan zones and blocks of flats, are still being built.
Questions persist about whether there will be enough accommodation. Qatari officials have offered an assortment of unusual housing options, including steel cabins and traditional wooden boats known as dhows, and they recently announced the addition of 30 000 rooms to meet surging demand.
Nearly 3 million tickets to the tournament have been sold, Fifa said, with the top purchasing countries including Qatar itself, Saudi Arabia and the US.
Human and labour rights groups say they continue to be concerned about the welfare of the foreign workers who transformed Qatar during a spate of zealous construction over the past 12 years using a system that advocates say has been deadly for workers and rife with abuse.
Despite Qatar's adoption of labour reforms, the risks to workers remain, including those recruited to staff the tournament, observers say.
And for the World Cup players, especially those who also participate in club leagues, the tournament's unusual timing means they have little opportunity to practise with their national teams.
Qatar's great virtue as host – its small size, which allows for speedy travel between stadiums for fans and teams – also is a potential liability, with infrastructure used by a population of 3 million people having to serve more than a million additional visitors.
Qatari officials have acknowledged some of the challenges, including traffic congestion, but insisting they have plans to meet any difficulties.
Chaotic scenes after a match in one of the new World Cup stadiums last month, including long lines at a metro station, added to the concern. At the news conference this week, Fifa chief operating officer Colin Smith said that was a “test event”, and he likened the problems to teething.
“There's a lot of issues that keep anyone awake at night,” Hassan al-Thawadi, the secretary-general of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy – Qatar's World Cup organisation – said on Wednesday. Organisers are working with a standard checklist for such an event, including operational and transport logistics, movement in and out of stadiums, and ensuring people are having a great time, he said.
“I'm not saying everything's fine. But what I'm saying is, if there is anything that gives some comfort, it's that our team has proved a number of times their resourcefulness and resilience in the face of issues that come up – some expected, some completely from left field,” Thawadi said.
Residents have approached the question of whether the country is ready with a mixture of enthusiasm, apprehension and resignation. “We're about to find out,” said JM Diaz, 38, a respiratory therapist, as he took a sunset stroll last week on the seafront road known as the Corniche. This key traffic artery that will be closed to vehicles during the tournament.
“It's a very small city,” said Diaz's wife, Aileen Robles. They said they were not focusing on what could go wrong, though, but on the match they planned to attend, South Korea versus Ghana. “Everyone is excited,” Robles said.
To ease congestion, organisers have announced that schools will be suspended and most government employees who can work from home will do so. Some cars will be barred from large parts of the city, and public transport networks are being augmented, including by adding metro cars.
The government has opened an old airport to commercial airline traffic, including hundreds of regional shuttle and charter flights in and out every day, moving ticket holders for day trips, or those who decided to stay in neighbouring countries including the United Arab Emirates.
Officials insist that there is enough accommodation for the visitors in flats, hotels and other facilities, including prefabricated huts. A booking website for ticket holders showed a range of options this week for peak periods during the tournament, at prices ranging from $80 (about R1 400) to several thousand dollars a night.
But at least one of the lower-cost options, an complex of flats featured on the website, appeared still to be under construction when a Washington Post reporter visited this week, with cranes towering overhead and unpainted buildings surrounded by scaffolding. A worker at the site said some buildings inside had been completed.
Everywhere, there are workers and the sound of heavy machinery. They toil on the sides of roads and highways that connect to the stadiums, built so recently that GPS devices do not have up-to-date directions. On a recent evening, a group was working on a row of unfinished yellow structures in Doha's souk, or market district, that are supposed to serve as a broadcast centre.
A worker resting at the site laughed and nodded when asked whether the project would be finished in time. Nearby, a normally dingy, dark plaza that serves as a gathering place for South Asian workers on the weekends had been transformed overnight this week, with landscaping and the addition of gleaming brass light fixtures.
The rush to the tournament's finish line has revived alarm at the treatment of migrant workers, despite an overhaul of labour regulations by Qatar in recent years that set a minimum wage and reformed a system that prevented workers from changing jobs or leaving the country at will.
That overhaul had brought "some notable improvements" for the country's 2 million migrant workers, Amnesty International said on Thursday, but added that thousands of workers “are still facing issues such as delayed or unpaid wages, denial of rest days, unsafe working conditions, barriers to changing jobs, and limited access to justice, while the deaths of thousands of workers remain uninvestigated”.
As Qatar continues preparing for the tournament, the 31 national squads that will join the host team are still weeks from assembling for their arrival in Doha.
Normally, the World Cup takes place in June and July, after most players have completed league seasons with their clubs in May. They report to training camps for several weeks of workouts, play warm-up matches, then travel to the host country for final preparations.
This World Cup, however, was moved to the winter because of the searing summer heat in the Persian Gulf. Consequently, the tournament falls in the middle of most league schedules, such as the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga, which will go dark for many weeks.
Because of the overlap, most players will not report to their national teams until November 12 or 13, just a week before the World Cup. Few teams will have time for tune-up games, and instead of teams flying to Qatar as whole units, their players will arrive individually shortly after playing in league matches.
The US players from Major League Soccer (MLS) teams will arrive on November 10, just five days after the MLS championship has been decided. European-based players will follow in the ensuing days.
“Players will be at the peak of their performance,” Infantino promised this week. “We expect a spectacle that lives up to the preparations made here in Qatar.”
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