The Al-Janoub Stadium – Doha, Qatar – Thursday 24th November 2022 – 1pm
Three hours after I had arrived in Doha I was on a bus from Souq Waqif, heading south towards the Al-Janoub Stadium as part of a 48-hour, six (or seven) game adventure in the desert. There would be little in the way of sight-seeing, cultural visits or even niceties such as sleep. I’d managed to arrange a very short trip, in between Lewes’ visit to Potters Bar Town on Tuesday night and back in time for kick-off at the Dripping Pan on Saturday afternoon for the game against Bowers & Pitsea.
I’d been fortunate it seemed to be able to grab direct flights, a room on one of the cruise ships and tickets to a couple of games on each day. But as the tournament approached, so did my desire to see three, or even four games in the days I was there. Was it even possible? FIFA’s own ticketing rules said you could only buy tickets for two games in any one day, but a loophole meant that as long as you weren’t the primary ticket holder (the one who bought the tickets) you could have a ticket “transferred” into your ticketing account.
The key, or so it seemed, was your Hayya Card. Every ticket holder had to have one of these which acted as your travel visa and provided free public transport. The official line was that tickets would be checked against your Hayya card on entry into the stadiums to prove you were the ticket holder. That wasn’t quite the case as I would find out.
So game number one wasn’t exactly one that had the visiting fans, or the locals for that matter, getting into the World Cup spirit. At every World Cup there’s one game where there are tickets available wherever you look. When the Ticket Resale platform opened, the one game that always had availability was this one.
The Al-Janoub stadium was affectionately called The Labia by some of the fans on the bus I was on. One asked if it was because of the unusual design that from the air could be compared to various female private parts. “Nah, it is just a c*nt to get to”. Thirty minutes after leaving the center of Doha the stadium appeared on the horizon in the middle of the desert. We continued to drive away from it though, before a local approached the driver. It appears he hadn’t been told where the bus drop off was, and was simply following signs for the public car park. This appeared to be a common issue in the opening few days of the tournament – plenty of transport but some of the drivers hadn’t actually been told where to go.
It was certainly hot. I felt a little bit overdressed with trousers and a shirt over my t-shirt but I’d asked the right questions of the right people and was sure that come 9pm as I left game three of the day I wouldn’t regret it. I’d packed my small man bag for a day’s adventures. Two spare power banks, camera, sunglasses, suncream, hat and Haribos. My first experience of the entry process was smooth. An initial cursory check of my ticket and my Hayya card, airport-style security and a number of questions about my suncream and whether it was edible and I was in.
The “fan area” on the outside of the ground was in full swing with an hour before kick off. Ear-splitting music, with a compare screaming out demands for any Swiss fans to “twerk” for their country on a stage with a large, female Cameroonian. Nobody was forthcoming. Dotted around the perimeter of the stadium were food and drink tents. Every one sold exactly the same uninspiring selection of soft drinks, crisps and nuts. There was no variety and even though I hadn’t eaten since plane food many hours before, I wasn’t that desperate.
Entry to the stadium was very smooth, assuming your phone doesn’t decide to do an automatically update. This left me hanging around outside the turnstiles, looking a bit suspicious. A security guard approached me and I showed him my phone. He directed me to a shaded area “just in case it took awhile”.
Finally in the stadium and I took my season. The Al-Janoub was the second stadium to be used in the World Cup to be complete back in 2019. Despite the affectionate nickname, the design of the roof was nothing so daring but was inspired by the sails of traditional Dhow boats, used by pearl divers from the region, “weaving through currents of the Persian Gulf”. Whilst it had a capacity of 40,000 (which miraculously grew in the first week of the tournament as did all the other stadium capacities), it would be reduced to 20,000 post tournament as the home of Qatar Stars League Al-Wakrah.
It was an impressive arena and I was glad to have a seat in the shade. The official attendance was later announced as 39,089 which was optimistic to say the least. I had a whole row to myself and wasn’t alone – I had managed to slip in a quick shower in the arrivals lounge at Doha so it wasn’t my unappealing personal hygiene I hoped – the areas behind the goal were busy but the hospitality areas opposite were sparsely populated to say the least.
Before the game there was a presentation on the pitch made by Gianni Infantino (introduced to a chorus of boos), sporting a smart suit, shirt and tie and the whitest trainers you’ll ever see, to Roger Milla, the Cameroonian legend from the 1990 and 1994 World Cup Finals. Milla wanted to take his award and celebrate in front of the small section of Cameroonian fans (the FIFA plants?) but security were having none of it and he was ushered away out of sight very quickly.
One of the features of every other game I saw, either in person or on TV, had a massive World Cup rolled onto the pitch before the game and fireworks marking the entrance of the two sides…except for this game. Perhaps someone simply forgot or it was never deemed a game worthy of the competition? Who knows.
So onto the game itself. Well, it probably lived up to the billing as the game with the least demand. Action was thin on the ground. Swiss efficiency snuffed out any attacking flair of the Indomitable Lions, managed by former West Ham player Rigobert Song and unusually for squads in the World Cup, didn’t have one starting player who played for a Premier League side (it is amazing what facts you could find out when games were dull). A single goal, scored by Switzerland’s Breel Embolo three minutes after the break was enough to settle the game.
I spent the last fifteen minutes planning my journey to game number two, kicking off just over an hour after final whistle at Education City. It was doable but would take some luck with the traffic, Olympic-pace speed walking and no faffing around. It wasn’t the auspicious start to the tournament that I had perhaps hoped for but there were five (or six) more games to go – nothing wrong with a slow burner.
And so onto Education City and South Korea vs Uruguay.
More photos from the game can be found here.
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