Khalid Tawalbeh
Doha
The World Cup has ended, leaving in its wake, great and unprecedented memories in millions of fans around the world, and thousands of journalists who came down to cover this great event.
The State of Qatar provided great facilities to fans and journalists coming to Doha that allowed them live great moments.
The Host Country Media Centre provided media facilities for 2,500 journalists coming from around the world including broadcasting stations, live games viewing stations, conference rooms, and service centres. Journalists who came to cover the event from around the world, in statements to Qatar Tribune, appreciated the great work and thanked Qatar for the facilities provided.
Russian photographer Vlaming Couta, who took photos from 20 matches, told Qatar Tribune that his first visit to Doha was very good and enabled him to discover a very organised, beautiful and safe country.
He said: “This is my first visit to ‘this developed country’. I visited Qatar 20 years ago but there has been so much development since that it has become unrecognisable. It is now a developed city with high towers and all modern infrastructure facilities. I have visited many other countries too, but during my present visit to Qatar, I did not encounter any difficulties in moving around for my journalistic work.”
He added: “This was the greatest memory I will have in my life. The Qatari arrangements were very good. It was easy to get to the stadiums and follow more than one match per day due to the proximity of the stadiums to one another, the availability of various means of transport and accessibility”.
“I was very impressed by the World Cup stadiums, perhaps the most prominent of which were Lusail and Al Bayt stadiums, and I was very impressed and surprised by the cooling technology used in them,” he said.
He described the media centres as “good and very large and equipped for journalists to carry out their tasks.” He said that he found many of the country’s tourist attractions very impressive, especially Souq Waqif and the Qatar Museum.
Algerian sports journalist Imad Maamir said that Qatar provided more and better facilities to media persons than they expected. “The atmosphere was excellent and fans of all countries supported their national teams in a friendly manner and without rancour. All countries that host the World Cup in the future should take Qatar as a model of preparation and organisation. This World Cup will remain etched in my mind for its all-round excellence.”
Ahmed Shawabkeh from the Al Ghad newspaper of Jordan, got to Qatar by car. “I found Qatar a very developed country. I noticed the ease of movement on the roads. Before we came here, we expected to see congestion on the streets because of the presence of millions of fans for the World Cup, but we found was the opposite,” he said. He said that he enjoyed following many teams in the tournament, most notably the French team, which has a strong attack led by superstar Kylian Mbappe.
Agence France-Presse journalist George Haddad, underscored: “The organisation of the World Cup was very good. Everything was amazing and unique. The closeness of facilities, landmarks and stadiums was an added advantage.Qatar has succeeded in delivering a very well organised tournament with it excellent infrastructure. I attended the last match between France and Argentina at Lusail Stadium, which was amazing.”
Maryam Al Jassem, Manager of PR and Communication, at Msheireb Properties stated: “We are pleased to have hosted many visitors from all over the world to show our world-class facilities. Msheireb continues to contribute to Qatar’s sustainability goals to create a better future for us all. We are excited for the rest of the world to discover their world downtown in the future.”
