•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

London. Qatar on Wednesday unveiled its ultramodern Lusail Stadium, which would host the opening match and final of the 2022 World Cup if the country’s bid to stage the tournament wins FIFA’s approval in December.

The air-conditioned stadium, which would have a capacity of 86,000, would take four years to build. Expected to be completed by 2019, it would also be surrounded by water.

If Qatar does not win hosting rights, the stadium will not be built.

Hassan Al-Thawadi, chairman of Qatar’s bid committee, said at the Leaders in Football conference in London that with eight weeks to go before FIFA makes its decision, he remains optimistic Qatar could stage the first World Cup in the Middle East.

Qatar’s bid received some criticism from a FIFA inspection team last month when Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the head of the FIFA delegation, said that the country’s small size — rather than the summer temperatures that can soar to above 50 degrees Celsius — could cause logistical problems.

If it wins FIFA’s approval, Qatar would become the smallest host nation to stage the finals since Uruguay hosted the first World Cup in 1930.

Al-Thawadi said his team had responded to the inspection team’s concerns.

“If you look at their comments, they did not refer to the weather, and for us that was a great, great success,” he said.

“A lot of people thought that our Achilles’ heel was the weather, but we have proved with our air-conditioned technology, we can overcome that.

“Regarding some of their comments regarding logistics and so on, we are proposing a unique and innovative concept, a compact World Cup [because of the size of the country].

“Whenever you are pioneering a concept it requires time for people to understand it. There will be skeptics, and they are right to be skeptical. They raised their concerns, but we think although those concerns might be valid, we are able to overcome them.”

Lusail Stadium completes the lineup of the 12 stadiums Qatar would use in 2022 and would incorporate the air-conditioning technology the country has pioneered to make its stadiums more comfortable.

Qatar is one of the four bids for the 2022 finals along with Australia, South Korea and Japan.

The country is spending $4 billion on building nine new stadiums and renovating three others.

Due to the format of the FIFA bidding process, the five hosting bids for the 2018 finals are also going for 2022 — in theory at least — with England, Russia, the United States and joint bids from Spain and Portugal, and Belgium and the Netherlands.

All bidding nations presented their candidatures before delegates at the London conference, apart from Australia.

FIFA will announce which countries will stage each event in Zurich on Dec. 2.


Reuters