DOHA — Nteeba George is stood at the top of the stairs, leaning against the railing, watching France play against Denmark. He is a 30-year-old from Uganda, his red cap with Colonel Sanders above the brim and “It’s finger lickin’ good” emblazoned on his black shirt a giveaway that he works at the nearby KFC.
“I always comes here to watch the games in my break,” he says. “We all enjoy the matches. It’s very good.”
We are watching the match on the giant screen outside Al Sadd’s three Barwa towers, a complex that includes a five-star hotel, luxury apartments, restaurants and offices. It’s intended for hotel guests, residents and the customers of the restaurants, but it’s been showing every game of the Qatar World Cup and modest crowds of migrant workers and tourists regularly fill makeshift seats created by the neat, raised gardens either side of a fountain outside the hotel to watch for free.
Further back is an overpass that crosses a busy, six-lane road. The bridge leads to Al Jazeera Street, which is popular with migrant workers and offers diverse cuisines from Turkey to Bangladesh to Korea. When games are on, people stretch up the steps to watch, either standing at the rail or sitting on the steps and peering through the translucent fibreglass.
George found work in Doha via an agency in Uganda. He arrived in April and has a two-year contract. He lives in the KFC accommodation in Ain Khaled, on the outskirts of Doha.
“It was my wish to go to a game but when I went to buy a ticket they were very expensive so I never got a chance,” he says. “So I watch here. I enjoyed England against Iran. There were a lot of people here. It depends on the match how busy it is, but for the big teams you get many people here.
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You could rarely find a starker contrast to reflect the reality of life in Qatar, where almost 90 per cent of the roughly three million population are low-paid migrant workers, the rest the wealthy citizens who form the Qatari elite. Two-bedroom apartments in the area can cost £1,800 a month to rent. At the hotel, Doha’s Millennium Plaza, illuminated by a vast lighting system that forms flags of all the competing countries, rooms cost what some migrant workers earn in a month or more.
A small road divides the overpass stairs and raised gardens from the curved tower complex, disappearing into the night sky, where large BMWs and Lexuses pull in for the group of valets to park their cars.
Navjot is one of the valets. He arrived from India for work and lives at accommodation near to England’s Al Wakrah training camp. He and his colleagues are watching the game in-between parking cars.
“A lot of people are coming at the moment,” he says. “I’m busy any time cars come. I don’t properly see the match. I like Ronaldo and Messi!”
Back on the stairs, I ask another gentleman if he speaks English and if I can ask him a few questions. He says he is Bangladeshi and, quite rightly, asks if I speak Arabic, then laughs. He points at the screen and I get the impression he’s telling me — again, quite rightly — that I’m interrupting him watching the football.
From up here, the mix of people can be fully appreciated. A mother and father with their young child, wearing a red coat with hood up, perch by the fountain, dodging splashes of water. Barwa security guards in olive uniforms stand with arms behind their backs, on duty but also enjoying the football. There are men in baseball caps and Taqiyahs, the Islamic rounded skullcap.
The audience is mostly male but a group of six Hindu women sit on the small row of front-facing steps that turn towards the screen at the bottom, using one another to rest their backs.
The crowd ebbs and flows as the game progresses. It loses some of its members, but gains others. Fans with shirts from France, Argentina, Germany, the USA come and go, or stay.
At one stage, early in the second half, I look up and Nteeba George is gone, presumably his break over. With 15 minutes remaining, a man turns up and stands below the stairway, at the back of those watching on ground-level, clutching his laptop bag, waiting to see if the reigning world champions will win on the way home.
Tunisians Fethi, 60, and Ali, 65, wearing smart trousers and flip-flops, sit on the makeshift seats provided by the raised gardens. Fethi’s daughter and son-in-law are nurses who live nearby and they are staying with them for the tournament.
Fethi attended Tunisia’s games against Denmark and Australia. “Believe me, this World Cup here in Qatar is the best ever,” he says, taking a drag on one of the many cigarettes he smokes during the game. “For everyone. They respect all the religions and nationalities, they are very friendly.”
The gay Qataris and LGBT+ football fans who didn’t feel safe travelling to a country where same-sex relationships are a criminal offence would probably disagree.
Ali, in his thick-rimmed black spectacles, watched the Tunisia v Denmark game here on the big screen. “It was full,” he says. “A lot of Tunisians live here and many come to Doha to see the World Cup.”
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The crowd here claps and cheers when Kylian Mbappe opens the scoring, but cheer even louder when Andreas Christensen equalises seven minutes later. Head shake with the disbelief of what might have been when Adrien Rabiot scissor kicks over. And the celebrations are lively for Mbappe’s late winner. On the whole, people seem to be celebrating the game, as opposed to either team, simply loving that live football is on and they have somewhere to watch it.
The area is packed by the end, with more people watching from the stairs and the street than in the circular cordoned off seated area reserved for paying customers.
The match ends and people rise to their feet and venture off into their different walks of life. A group of six security guards in white shirts and black ties head back towards the Amiri Gems store, to the right of the complex, a place selling diamonds and luxury watches the vast majority in Qatar will never be able to afford.
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