He had stunned by winning the organization of the Football World Cup: Qatar entered the home stretch on Sunday in preparations for one year of one of the most anticipated sporting events on the planet.
The tiny but very wealthy Gulf gas emirate hopes to welcome more than a million supporters and deny its contemptors, with the experience of other international competitions, from football to tennis to Formula 1.
But organizing this gigantic gathering, with its hundreds of thousands of fans, is by far the biggest challenge of this desert peninsula of 2.7 million inhabitants where fervor and popular party spirit are rarely present.
Twelve months before the kick-off on November 21, 2022, the capital Doha, which hosts almost all of the matches, is still strewn with construction work that sows chaos in its streets, exasperating the inhabitants.
With some infrastructure projects delayed by the pandemic, the clock is ticking faster than organizers would have liked, as preparations are more under scrutiny than ever.
The authorities assure that the infrastructure will be ready on time. Six of the eight stadiums planned are even to host the Arab Cup at the end of the month.
“I have never seen a country in the world so well prepared in advance (…) It will be like a toy store for the fans,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino told AFP. , during a recent visit to Qatar.
“Lots of criticism”
Known for its gas wealth and its Al-Jazeera news channel, the emirate rocked the football world in 2010 by beating the United States, despite being favorites in the designation phase of the host country.
This victory in extremis had raised accusations of buying votes, strongly denied, as well as many questions about the capacities of the small conservative Muslim emirate to host such an event.
Since then, FIFA’s old guard has been shaken up by a series of corruption cases as Qatar has become a major player in the sport, taking on Paris Saint-Germain and becoming a sponsor of FC Barcelona.
Vilified because of the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, especially those who participated in the construction of stadiums, Qatar has undertaken rare reforms for the Gulf, but NGOs consider them insufficient and not systematically applied.
“We received a lot of criticism. Some are constructive and we have tried to take them into account, ”Fatma al-Nouaïmi, communications manager of the organizing committee, said last month. “We also try not to let these criticisms stop us,” she added.
Qatar has been more widely criticized for its human rights violations, such as the criminalization of homosexuality or the lack of freedom of expression.
“In unknown land”
On a practical level, the World Cup had to be moved to winter to avoid the suffocating summer heat in the Gulf. And questions persist about the country’s capacity to accommodate some 1.2 million tourists, the equivalent of nearly half of the population, in a territory the size of Île-de-France.
To compensate for the lack of hotel rooms, already booked en masse, the authorities are talking about floating accommodation, homestays, new apartments or even air-conditioned tents.
“Neither the stadiums, nor the matches or the construction problems: managing more than 300,000 new visitors every day is the real challenge,” said a sports events expert familiar with the matter.
“This World Cup takes place in uncharted waters. There has never been a mega sporting event with so many visitors (…) in such a small area, ”he points out.
Meanwhile, Qatar promises to vaccinate supporters against COVID-19, while FIFA seeks to allay concerns over access to alcohol, which is very restricted in the country where it remains a taboo subject.
“(Alcohol) will be available in areas provided for this purpose,” a FIFA spokesperson told AFP.
On the ground, France, defending champion since 2018, has already qualified, alongside other major selections: Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, England, … Italy and Portugal will have to go through dams in March.
For whom it will be the first World Cup and despite its impressive victory in the Asian Cup in 2019, Qatar, qualified as host country, will dream above all of a qualification in the first round.