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‘Historic bid for Middle East’

Qatar on Wednesday offered FIFA a “historic opportunity” to bring football’s World Cup to the Middle East in 2022, building dialogue across the religious divide and promising huge commercial benefits.

“We are offering FIFA a historic opportunity to expand the frontiers of the World Cup. Football has a date with history,” Shaikh Mohammad bin Hamad Al Thani said in his final pitch to the 22 strong executive committee of world football’s governing body.

Hamad Al Thani, the chairman of Qatar’s bid, led a polished and multilingual final presentation ahead of the body’s vote on Thursday, with noticeably the youngest bidding team in the race to host the world’s biggest crowd puller.

Qatar represented “the voice of millions of fans across the Middle East who share passion for fooball,” he added, promising to harness huge growth in the region’s young population, as well as its time zone in between east and west.

“The commercial opportunities open to the global football family are massive,” said Hassan Al Thawadi, the 2022 bid’s chief executive.

Qatar estimates that it stands at the middle of a television market of up to 3.2 billion television viewers in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The Qataris sought to counter FIFA’s key concerns, about security, the heat and the legacy of more than a dozen new stadiums in the small Gulf nation, in a presentation.

“Qatar is a reliable partner, Qatar is constant and Qatar is responsible, said Hamad Al Thani, who added that it would show “a new face of the Middle East and... dialogue between peoples.”

The bid committee outlined projects for cooled and modular stadiums that would be dismantled and transferred to developing countries afterwards, playing to world football chiefs stated quest for “legacy” with each major event.

“From Doha to Damascus, the hope for a generation of youth will be shown not to be an elusive dream,” concluded Moza bint Nasser Al Missned, chair of the Qatar Foundation for education and community development, and the wife of the Amir of Qatar.

Qatar’s rivals for the organisation of the 2022 event are Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.