Qatar World Cup on schedule: organisers

Tournament chief Hassan Al-Thawadi satisfied with progress.

DOHA: The controversies surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the football 2022 World Cup may continue unabated but so too do the country’s preparations for the tournament itself.

“I can say we are on schedule,” said tournament chief Hassan Al-Thawadi.

This week, the man who oversaw Brazil’s preparations for the 2014 World Cup, Ricardo Trade, visited Qatar and announced himself “impressed with the amount of detailed planning and stadium progress,” achieved by the Qataris seven years away from the start of the tournament.

Confidence in the progress of Qatar’s preparation comes at the same time as the howls of protest at the country’s proposed hosting of the World Cup grow ever louder.

Just in the past few weeks alone, Qatar’s poor image in the eyes of many abroad has been further battered by events.

Anger over the arrests of two foreign journalist crews trying to expose the squalid living conditions faced by many labourers, the Council of Europe calling for a re-run of the vote which awarded the tournament to the Gulf emirate, trades unions urging World Cup sponsors to lobby for reform, and the imminent publication of another unfavourable Amnesty International report, have all added to the feeling that Qatar’s World Cup is under permanent seige.

Meanwhile a FIFA meeting later this month could see a resolution tabled to remove the World Cup from Qatar because of the slow pace of labour reforms.

Yet inside Qatar, all this appears to be making little difference to the Gulf country’s timetable for the 2022 tournament.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2015.

Like Sports on Facebook, follow @ETribuneSports on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.