DUBAI, United Arab Emirates —
Qatar’s World Cup will be the first on Arab soil but despite excitement in the
Middle East, the fervor is not universal in a region usually united by its
passion for football.
اضافة اعلان
Although the November 20 through December 18
tournament is geographically close for many Arab fans, high costs are a problem
as a cocktail of crises and economic woes plague much of the Middle East and
North Africa.
“Accommodation and transport costs are exorbitant,”
said Makram Abed, who runs a 40,000-strong Facebook fan page for Tunisia’s
national side, one of the four Arab teams qualified along with Qatar, Morocco,
and Saudi Arabia.
Qatar “could have offered preferential prices” to
fans in the region, Abed told AFP, although Qatar says it has subsidized the
cost of accommodation available on its official portal.
Abed was one of several fans contacted by AFP in a
straw poll of supporters across the region, whose population is more than 400
million.
World Cups have
traditionally attracted more affluent supporters than weekly club football,
whose fan base is often working-class, football historian Paul Dietschy told
AFP.
The World Cup in Qatar “reinforces” the universal
trend of a growing gap between the rich and the poor, Dietschy said.
Even in oil-rich
Saudi Arabia, which has the Arab
world’s largest economy and shares a land border with Qatar, fans said the
costs were prohibitive.
“You have to take out a loan to attend the three
(group) matches,” said 25-year-old Saudi student Mouhannad, who asked not to be
identified by his full name.
According to FIFA, Qatar has topped the list of
countries for World Cup ticket purchases, which neared three million.
Gulf neighbors the UAE and Saudi Arabia are also
among the top 10 ticket-buyers.
In fact, Saudi Arabia has made more accommodation
bookings than any other country, according to the Qatar organizing committee.
Egypt, considered an
Arab football hotspot, did not
qualify, but some there still plan to travel, including Amr Mamdouh, who is
looking forward to his Gulf visit.
“Flights to Qatar cost half as much” as those to
Russia, which hosted the 2018 World Cup, he said.
Thousands of Arab expatriates living in the Gulf
will also board the daily airlift of more than 160 shuttle flights laid on
between Qatar and its neighbors.
They include Fadi Bustros, a Lebanese living in
Dubai, who will take the one-hour flight to Doha and return the same day.
But Bustros fears a “real World Cup atmosphere” may
be lacking, given controversies around Qatar’s hosting and the unprecedented
scheduling in winter rather than summer, when many fans prefer to travel.
In Morocco, authorities have announced subsidized
flights to Qatar, but they still cost around $760. For Yassin, a 34-year-old
Moroccan who attended the 2018 World Cup, the discount is not incentive enough.
“A World Cup is synonymous with a beautiful
atmosphere, human encounters, carelessness, celebration,” he said.
“Qatar does not meet this criteria.”
Fellow Moroccan Wassim Riane, who also went to the
World Cup in Russia, said he too will skip the trip to
Qatar, “a country
without a football history or a culture of celebration”.
Football landed in the Arabian peninsula in the
1970s, with the influx of oil companies and expatriate workers — much later
than the rest of the Middle East, which was subject to French and British
colonial rule.
In Egypt, the first football clubs were created
after World War I.
According to Dietschy, football fandom follows two
trends in the Arab world.
In countries such as Morocco, Iraq, Syria, and
Algeria, “football is popular and attracts crowds” in stadiums, said Dietschy.
But in other countries, including Qatar, football is
“more of a show that is watched on television” as well as a tool of “soft
power”.
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