How Qatar made it into world sports limelight — with plenty more to come

DOHA: Qatar’s success in winning host rights to the 2022 World Cup has made a dramatic contribution in helping put the Gulf state on the international commercial and sporting map.
There is more to come. Doha is bidding to host the 2020 Olympic Games and another significant bid announcement is due in January.
The significance of the ‘World Cup effect’ was assessed by Hassan Al-Thawadi, secretary-general of the 2022 Supreme Council who was bid chief executive.
Al-Thawadi told the Aspire4Sport conference: “It’s brought Qatar more and more to the limelight. I’ve spoken to a lot of private businesses, who said that in business discussions there has been more interest in their business since Qatar won the right to host World Cup.
“It’s also accelerated a lot of these interests in terms of business relations, development business partnerships and so on. The average individual knows about Qatar now.
“I think we have to utilise that knowledge so that the average individual today doesn’t just know that Qatar is hosting the World Cup but knows what Qatar is about. I think it’s going along the right way.”
Al-Thawadi was pleased that his message during the bid process – which reached a winning climax a year ago – had been underscored by the Al Sadd club’s recent triumph in the Asian Champions League.
Soccer infrastructure
He said: “That was a source of great pride because it was another demonstration of the intitiatives and development of our soccer infrastructure. We’ve taken the first steps and the future looks very good.”
Al-Thawadi explaining how the Qataris had examined other bids and hostings to assess systems and structures which would work in a Middle East context. These included the Olympic Development Authority serving London 2012 on which the Supreme Council had been modelled loosely.
He said: “The World Cup plans complement the aims and in some cases serve as accelerators in our Qatar 2030 vision.”
Criticism after the bid success had only “strengthened our resolve” and helped the Qataris understand “the gap between East and West.” Al-Thawadi added: “That showed us the the inaccuracoies and misperceptions that people had and gave us a plan for the issues we had to tackle about the true face of Qatar and the Middle East.”
He expected that some foreign skeptcism would continue all the way up until the 2022 finals.
“However, we’ve gone a long way towards addressing that . . . we’ve done a lot of good work. Qatar is moving forward in a very positive way and, as we continue working on our promises, I hope that the skepticism will start fading away.”