Paul and I went out to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup and saw games at five of the eight tournament stadiums. I’d assumed that having ticked the country off my list, I’d be unlikely to add to my total of Qatari stadiums visited.
What I hadn’t allowed for was a missed flight connection that left me with twenty-four hours kicking my heels in Doha before my rescheduled onward flight.
A quick check on the Futbology App revealed that there were a couple of games within a manageable distance of my hotel. The fixture I selected was in the Qatari Stars Cup, which I think might be a tournament that exists to keep busy those players who hadn’t been called up by their countries during the international break.
I bought a thirty-riyal VIP ticket online and took the subway to the Suhaim bin Hamed stadium. It’s a lot smaller and older than the grounds I’d been to during the World Cup, dating back forty years and accommodating a maximum crowd of twenty thousand.
After a quick glance at the trophy cabinet, I took my seat in the main stand. Nothing about the experience struck me as being for VIPs and I might as well have paid ten riyals for what would have been a similar view.
I got chatting to a couple of Al-Ahli fans who very kindly pointed out the German international Julian Draxler and some other guy who had played for PSG. They also told me that they’d been at the same stadium for a Diamond League athletics meeting earlier in the year that had attracted a capacity crowd. There were barely a hundred people watching this fixture.
Perhaps the low attendance was due to neither of the teams regularly playing at the ground. One of the competition quirks is that neutral venues are used. That’s great for groundhoppers, but a likely irritant to most regular supporters.
Neither side seemed to over-exert themselves. Al-Shahaniya took the lead in the first half and Al-Ahli equalised soon after the break. This stage of the competition is a mini-league and both sides looked content to avoid defeat.
On my return drive to the airport the next morning I passed the World Cup stadium that incorporated shipping containers into its design. I’d thought that it had been dismantled immediately after the tournament but from what I could see it was still intact. If I get another flight delay in the future, perhaps I’ll get the opportunity to see a game there too.
Tags: Diamond League, Doha, Draxler
Trail of the Lion King 
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