PeterParker wrote:Im_Spartacus wrote:PeterParker wrote:If you think Russia will be bad, wait for Qatar.
Really?
I personally think Qatar will likely be one of the most successful world cups ever held from the fans perspective, so I'm very interested to hear why it would be bad, in comparison to the fan experience so far in this tournament or in Russia where people likely simply won't go because of fear of violence
You live there, so you might know things better.
From the outside, looks like a poor idea. First of all, this might be the first major competition held there, how is the security? How are things outside Dubai?
I think the fans will skip that one. If you look at the past two World Cups, you will see that many european supporters decided to say a definitive pass to the competition for reasons from safety, to distance and so on. With this you might add prices also.
Plus, like it or not, there will be a lot of rumours about how the stadiums will be built and how will human rights will be respected or not. But again, this is an outsiders point of view, your arguments are more solid, I am sure.
My first observation, particularly regarding the security aspect, is that essentially in
Qatar and UAE fuck all happens without their intelligence people knowing about it. I can't actually think of a safer place to hold a World Cup from a terrorism perspective. Like it or not, Qatar have been known to actually pay protection money to Al Qaeda back in the day when they were a thing, so these people won't hesitate to do what is necessary for a safe World Cup.
From the hooligan side of things, the accommodation options in Qatar will likely be 5* hotels and cruise ships in the order of £300 a night, so the cost for these empty heads to pitch up for more than a couple of days will be prohibitively expensive. Like with Japan/Korea, South Africa, Brazil, the thug elements simply won't be able to afford it. The only concern would be the concentration of stadia and accommodation in and around Doha, however if you have priced out the hooligan element, I personally think this concentration of fans from all countries could make for the best fan zones the best ever seen. The threat that you WILL do serious bird in a nasty prison system if you step out of line should be enough to dissuade those who do go from acting up.
On the workers issues, one thing I don't accept is the tabloid screaming about Construction deaths, I can categorically assure you that is a myth......to give an example, when these stories were coming out in the media about people dying on World Cup construction sites, they hadn't even broken ground on a single stadium and the death rate of working age Nepali and Indians (from all causes) is actually considerably lower in Qatar than in their home countries. When I left Qatar a year ago, there hadn't been a single death on any World Cup site.....that will change though as the lack of safety awareness of some of the Indian workers has to be seen to be believed, and they need protecting from themselves which is why the main stadium contractors are all European companies like Bechtel, Carillion etc, and held to European site safety standards.
Yes abuses of workers exist amongst some unscrupulous sub contractors, and Qatar has to clean it's act up to sort this out, but the reality is that the vast majority of workers are far better off in Qatar, than the squalor that they came from.
Don't get me wrong, I won't defend them against the indefensible like aspects of their labor law and Kafala system that they still refuse to amend, but I hope I can provide a more balanced view of how it's likely to play out vs the largely racist, lazy, uninformed hysteria that the media peddle
