Madam, – I arrived home to Ireland from Qatar, where I reside, the morning after the announcement was made that Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. I was initially bemused but subsequently bewildered by the negative response Qatar is receiving from our newspapers’ sports writers as a venue for this international event.
What I have been reading appears to me to show an almost total lack of knowledge of this progressive, stable and most friendly little country and I would be curious to know how many of these reporters have ever visited Qatar. No doubt as time progresses, Qatar will receive further negative criticism as its culture and values do not follow a strict Western code.
I lived in Qatar for four years in the late 1970s and returned for the first time in 30 years last year. I was amazed at the progress this “sleepy” country had made in this time without losing its friendliness and values, more than I can say, regrettably, for the short-lived Celtic Tiger and our “Ireland of the Welcomes”.
Qatar is a stable country and one of the safest countries in the world (and not because of a false perception of the harshness of its laws). Despite Qatar having the second largest natural gas reserves in the world, the innovative technology being developed to cool the stadiums will be “solar power”, forethought Fifa should be given some credit for as generations to come will benefit from the initiative being taken by the Qataris.
Qatar hosting the World Cup is not just about Qatar, it’s about all the countries in the regional catchment area which have now been given an opportunity, as have other world regions, to attend one of the world’s premier sporting events in a safe environment. Unlike other larger countries which have hosted such international events, Qatar will not leave a string of economic woes in the wake of 2022.
Emigration placed me in southern Africa when South Africa was awarded the 2010 World Cup; similar negative reporting on this venue persisted until the South Africans proved otherwise.
Have our reporters not learned that it’s not just “first world” nations that have capabilities for these events or to use an old newspaper cliché, is it a question of “good news will not sell newspapers”? – Yours, etc,