After an opening ceremony to glory, the host country lost to the Ecuador (0-2) in the first game of the tournament, Sunday.
By Clément Martel (al-Khor, Qatar, Special Envoy)
A torch in the night, lighting the desert, and guiding towards the bowels of a gigantic Bedouine tent. A sound and light spectacle magnifices the culture of the country, and fully integrating it into the world. And a football match of a disappointing level, completed in front of many deserted seats. Sunday, November 20, after twelve years of waiting and months of controversy, Qatar officially opened the World Cup it organizes. Novice in the competition, the country has logically lost to Ecuador (0-2).
It was in Al-Khor, about fifty kilometers north of Doha, that Qatar launched its world “. And multiplied the symbols, in this city of origin of the Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser, mother of the current emir and luxury ambassador of the emirate on the international scene – she was alongside her husband during the attribution of the Global in Qatar, in 2010.
In a stadium inspired by a Bedouin tent -and literally named al -Bayt, the house -, the gas emirate has emphasized his desire for hospitality. “People will come here, in Qatar, since the whole world, whatever their race, their nationality, their religion or their orientation,” said sheikh Tamim ben Hamad al Thani, welcoming the world in the doha of all “. Coronation of the Soft Power Soft Power strategy of the ruling family of the Gulf’s little state, the launch of the World Cup had to live up to its ambitions.
The story of Qatar as they want to be way
And who better than Morgan Freeman to lend his body to this great seduction operation? In 2010, the American actor was the voice of the United States’s candidacy to obtain the 2022 World Cup – lost against Qatar. On Sunday, he narrated Qatar as the emirate wants us to see it. A country where globalized culture – embodied by the world K -Pop star, Jung Kook, one of the heads of the BTS group – is overlooked with traditional music. A country whose World Cup, however decried it may be, is part of the continuity of the previous ones, force references to support (music and mascots). A country at the heart of the game.
The tribune of honor reflected the place now occupied by Qatar, not so long ago, the object of a blockade by its neighbors. Behind the emir, the presence of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed Ben Salman, and the Egyptian presidents, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, and Turkish, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, illustrated Doha’s will to make “his” World Cup that of the Arab-Muslim world. A world too often on the fringes of the Grands-Messes Sports, despite millions of fans devoted to football, which surge in Doha.
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