The World Cup was held in Qatar, bought by Qatar and financed by it, but you have to remember that there are very few Qataris here. In a practical way, the people performing the tournament – volunteers, drivers, ushers, security personnel – are mostly Indians, Pakistanis, Africans and other immigrants from third world countries, and those who have been and traveled in these countries (prepare for an understatement) know that they are not known for their efficiency or the user experience that they are giving to visitors. Therefore, it is not surprising that along with the spectacular buildings and investment in infrastructure, the tournament occasionally has some failures and somewhat puzzling behaviors, which, at least to Western eyes, causes eyebrows to be raised. Or as they say in spoken Israeli, hallucination.
The Qataris are used to buying success with money, which is not always enough. Their large investment is mainly reflected in the quantities. There is a fleet of buses, a fleet of volunteers, a fleet of policemen, and as with the excessive construction that characterizes Doha, the abundance is expressed in an excessive amount of personnel, which produces ridiculous scenes. For example, a fan goes to buy a soft drink in the stadium, approaches the stand, and immediately one of the eight bored sellers rushes at him and calls him “come here, buy from me”. In fact, sometimes three Bangladeshis together manage the sale of one bottle of Coke, advise each other how to operate the cash register and calculate together how much surplus the amused customer gets.
Until now, there is a real problem with evacuating stadiums (the city is small, the congestion is great), but the attempt to help is evident, and at intersections there are volunteers whose job it is to direct the traffic. The thing is, there are so many of them, that they stand a few meters away from each other, thus creating a strange spectacle of traffic controllers close together in a long line, all sending the vehicles and the fans to the same place, in a ridiculous display of inefficiency. Or for example, a man is sitting at a FIFA buffet, eating leisurely, and because of the excessive amount of waiters and piccolos, a waiter is literally lurking behind him, just waiting to do some effective action. The journalist has not finished the last bite from the plate, and he can already feel the waiter’s breathing on his back and the question “Are you finished? May I contact you?” He let me know.
Police officers stand by them idly, street cleaners no longer have anything to collect, and even in the metro dozens of helpers do not know who to help. At every traffic light, in fact on almost every street corner, there is a volunteer whose job it is to guard the pedestrians, and sometimes you are not allowed to cross without his permission. And so an adult man, in the fifth decade of his life, had to wait for instruction from a boy who would confirm to him that the road was now clear and he was allowed to cross the crosswalk safely, as if he were a child assisting the golden guards before school.
One of the most jarring phenomena in traffic management in Doha concerns megaphones. Since the instructions are simple (“to exit the Corniche, turn left”), the volunteers usually use the recording technology in the megaphone, to save energy and not say the same sentence over and over again. The end result is a short message that is played in a recorded message in a shrill and loud microphone voice: “To exit the Corniche turn left, to exit the Corniche turn left, to exit the Corniche turn left” and so on, at an ear-splitting volume, with unbearable receptivity. This may sound like a petty complaint, but in fact it is an environmental nuisance, which produces an unpleasant feeling of laziness, amateurism and insensitivity.
One of the puzzling things here in Qatar is the obsession with refrigeration. The criticism of the World Cup in the summer in the heavy heat of Doha made the Qataris develop technologies to cool the stadiums, and they are so proud of it that they use it even when it is not necessary. Sometimes the weather is pleasant, the wind blows cool, yet powerful air conditioners are turned on, freezing the poor crowd who have to wrap themselves in warm clothes. In the older stadiums, these are freezing air vents in the upper part, but in the modern stadiums it is impossible to escape the cooling that flows from air vents under the seats. The technology is impressive, certainly, but does it make sense that even on a hot day at one in the afternoon, the spectator freezes in the stands, rubs his arms to warm up, looks to the sides in frustration and mutters, “Will someone turn down the air conditioning a little?”. The feeling is once again that the fan is a victim of the Qataris’ attempt to make davinis.
I didn’t understand why I was freezing here in the stadium until I discovered these crazy air conditioners pic.twitter.com/2AhdPfnXPe
— chasdai peace (pazunia) November 21, 2022
As mentioned, the most difficult problem appears in the evacuation of the stadiums after games. It is of course not an easy task to route tens of thousands of people who are leaving at the same time, and for this purpose not only a logistical system and infrastructure are required, but also tradition and history that will channel the conduct. But the Qataris have no real tradition or history when it comes to football, and this is also felt in the atmosphere around the stadiums, which is not always related to the game and not connected to the essence of the fans.
Before games, for example, you encounter a very puzzling variety of activities, such as an offer to take a photo with birds of prey in a Bedouin tent. The entertainment options are also quite strange: a saxophonist who plays melancholic music, a Chinese choir in an opera performance, Indian dances in a remote corner that only a lost person can come across on the way, and again and again far-fetched shows that make a person at first stunned, and then reflect again on the wanton waste of money.
But nothing compares to the magical moments at the end of games: at the end, a group of fans burst into the large square outside the stadium, enthusiastically waving the flags of the winning team, and begin to sing, dance and whistle. The scene is so artificial that it is clear to all that these are people that it is their job to create an exciting atmosphere. The attempt is cute, but lacks authenticity and even produces alienation, when you see a bunch of Indians “celebrating” England’s victory with darbukas.
One of the hallucinatory phenomena in the World Cup: paid local fans whose job it is to create celebrations for the winning team. In the video after England’s victory: these are really not fans of the England team pic.twitter.com/c0f0uGVp51
— chasdai peace (pazunia) November 24, 2022
And those who came out of nowhere to the stadium square with matching flags: they are not fans of the Saudi Arabian national team pic.twitter.com/geYlM5UcAM
— chasdai peace (pazunia) November 24, 2022
However, and despite everything, it’s important to clarify: the strange feeling is a big part of the fun here.