Evening report: Al Bayt Stadium for Qatar 2022 Opening Match

Notes from Qatar vs Ecuador at Al Bayt Stadium, for the opening match of the FIFA World Cup. Opening ceremony, peculiar VAR, match-rigging rumors, intriguing fans, and more.

Camels outside of Al Bayt Stadium this evening in Doha ahead of the opening ceremony for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

A very large tent

The 2022 FIFA World Cup began today at Al Bayt Stadium just north of Doha, in a stadium meticulously designed to be the world’s largest Bedouin tent. Its symbol stands for hospitality in the desert. And as proclaimed in the opening ceremony, a tent this large- built by migrant workers, exploited to the point of indentured servitude and death- is big enough to let all the world in. 

And, in a way, I suppose all of it has arrived: hope, achievement, celebration, corruption, suffering, death, understanding, commonality, belief, judgment, prejudice, hypocrisy. I could go on. 

Lining the path on arrival, from media bus to media center, stood neat rows of traditionally-clad, stern-faced men astride camels, and atop horses. Together they forged a traditional, Arabian path toward the opening game. It would be a traditional, Arabian welcome inside.

I arrived near 3:30, just as the sun began its descent elegantly behind them. It’s early to rest in the desert, this close to the center of the earth. To my left, as I walked toward media-labeled buildings beyond the camels, a small cluster of men kneeled on the grass, bending toward the sun’s departure in prayer. 

Inside, just beyond them, I oriented myself to the immediate crowd. They filled a room emblazoned with the familiar face of USMNT manager Gregg Berhalter, and his now officially named captain, Tyler Adams. I’d reneged on their conference, live at that moment 45 minutes behind me in Doha, in order to arrive at the furthest stretch of stadium in the tournament, the bedouin tent welcoming some 60,000 in Al Khor. 

I sat for a minute before going in, watching as they spoke calmly out toward the routine and expected questions, providing routine and expected answers to the prying curiosities surrounding an essential match with Wales, as well as the things that had nothing to do with playing Wales, or soccer.