Assi Maman, Qatar |
The fans of the teams in Qatar (Radad Jabara)
Qatar’s rich live on the pearl island and everything there is decorated for the opening of the World Cup, even more than the city itself. In the last day, more and more flags are seen on the balconies of the houses and of course also on the hotels that are in the vicinity, but there is really no atmosphere of football in the streets before the biggest football event. Less than 48 hours until the opening whistle, it’s only the locals celebrating the event.
In the afternoon the restaurants are empty in the area of the luxury hotels, in the streets themselves few people go outside and the traffic increases mainly in the evening when the weather becomes more pleasant. The long promenade along the beach near the market has a festive atmosphere with crowds of people and the vast majority of them are locals wearing shirts of foreign national teams, who are Asians who came to work and found themselves in the biggest celebration they could ask for. From time to time you hear fans singing in the street with Qatari flags, but at the moment only the locals provide the required color.
Precisely on the private and closed beaches, the ones that were opened especially for tourists in preparation for the World Cup, you can see tourists from Europe and South America sunbathing leisurely in swimwear. In such a conservative country, which follows the laws of Islam, seeing foreign women in bikinis is quite strange, but the locals allow it to happen quietly.
While the ban on the sale of alcohol in stadiums was announced, the parks set up for fans stood deserted and the street cleaners were seen out of work. A taxi driver, originally from Nepal, said: “The streets are empty also because the locals are forbidden to leave their homes this month, except for shopping and work. My friends say that the hotels are starting to fill up with tourists and there is work, but many places are empty because the tourists haven’t come yet.”
Although there is no festive atmosphere and you don’t see many fans from abroad, in Doha they say that there is a large crowd that makes its way to the country by plane. In Qatar, they built stadiums with tens of thousands of seats especially for the World Cup, built large and spacious parks, the metro that was built in recent years is fully functional, the stages in the festival areas are ready and there is a lot of color in the streets – but for now there is no significant presence of foreign fans in Qatar, but the locals? They are in the sky.
