■ The Bay Course will host the opener and will look like an Arab-style marquee.
■ Qatar World Cup countdown clock.
■ New Express reporter Wang Di
On the 12th Beijing time, qatar World Cup officially announced that the World Cup opener will be advanced to 0:00 a.m. Beijing time on November 21. This means that the Qatar World Cup has achieved "acceleration" and entered the countdown to the last 100 days.
Are you all ready for this football extravaganza in winter?
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The World Cup is held in winter
This is the first time the World Cup has been held in the winter of the Northern Hemisphere.
Located in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, Qatar has a hot, dry tropical desert climate throughout the year. If the World Cup is held as usual in June-July, it will be played in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius and possibly even 50 degrees Celsius.
Qatar had proposed hosting the tournament in the summer, in a fully enclosed stadium with air conditioning, but the plan was rejected. Eventually, the Qatar World Cup was put in the winter. However, winter in the Persian Gulf is not too cold, the average temperature is above 20 degrees Celsius, and there is occasionally a small amount of rainfall, and the air is not too dry.
In fact, hosting the Football World Cup in winter is not a challenge, but also a new test for the players. Although the Qatar World Cup is the first World Cup to be held in the northern hemisphere in the winter, this event also makes the outside world full of expectations. No one knows whether this World Cup in the winter will go down in history, after all, people have not tried to host the World Cup in the winter so far.
The specific schedule of the Qatar World Cup is from November 21 to December 18, Beijing time, for a period of 28 days. To make way for the World Cup, leagues have been forced to adjust their schedules, so much so that this season's Premier League began playing in early August.
Just as the 100-day countdown to the Qatar World Cup is in place, FIFA officials have released an important message that the World Cup will be held one day in advance, the opening match will be played by the host Qatar against Ecuador, and the kick-off time of the game will be changed to 0:00 Beijing time on November 21, and the venue will be Doha Bay Stadium.
For a long time, the host or the defending champion to participate in the opening match is the tradition of the World Cup, but after the release of the Qatar World Cup schedule, the outside world found that the original Qatar team in the A group position was not arranged to appear in the first match, the two teams that originally appeared were the Netherlands and Senegal, and the kick-off time of that game was 18:00 Beijing time on November 21. After the Qatari application and the consideration of various factors, FIFA finally decided to arrange qatar and Ecuador to compete for the opening battle, such a change has also been recognized by many parties, after all, as a grand event with a history of nearly a hundred years, following the tradition should be the most basic.
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The most expensive World Cup ever made
Among all continents, Europe has hosted the largest Number of World Cups in history, with 11. It was held 5 times in South America, 3 times in North America and 1 time in Africa. Asia has hosted one previous World Cup, the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan. Twenty years later, the World Cup returned to Asia, with Qatar becoming the second Asian country to host the World Cup in Asia, the first to host the World Cup in the Middle East.
Qatar is also the first World Cup host country since World War II that has never qualified for the finals before, and the only team to qualify for the finals for the first time in this World Cup.
Qatar reportedly spent more than $200 billion on infrastructure, including stadiums, to host the World Cup. By comparison, the 2018 World Cup in Russia cost only about $15 billion, and Qataris' budget is more than 10 times that of Russia, which also makes the Qatar World Cup the most luxurious World Cup match to date.
Just to say that the cost is not objective enough, let's look at the station of the participating teams. Last month, FIFA revealed that the 32 football teams participating in this year's World Cup will be based in Arab-style palaces, resorts and luxury hotels. Defending champions, France, for example, will stay at the Messira Resort near Doha, known for its "private palace-like environment", with a single-day price of $2,500 per villa.
The German team will live in Zular, overlooking the Bay, which claims to be the largest sanatorium in the Middle East, and the royal suites of the entire sanatorium are owned by the Qatari royal family, each priced at more than $10,000 a day. The Belgian team's choice is the Hilton Salva Hotel, which has its own private beach, private water theme park, slides and bungee jumping cliffs, and villas here are priced at $7,000 a day.
Other big-name teams are also mostly very luxurious hotels, but as in most parts of the Middle East, alcoholic beverages are not served here.
Of course, there are also teams that choose to live frugally, such as Argentina and Spain, who live in dormitories at Qatar University. However, the dormitories here are also five-star hotel level, gymnasium, swimming pool, game hall all have everything, each room costs more than $1,000 a day.
FIFA said most of the teams were "in hotels within a 10-kilometre radius from each other, which further ensured that the exciting atmosphere of the event was concentrated in Andy in and around Doha". The drive between them is less than an hour, and the players don't have to travel long distances from one place to another.
● Opener
Qatar vs Ecuador
November 21 00 ∶0
Doha Bay Stadium
● Group situation
Group A: Qatar Ecuador Senegal Netherlands
Group B: England Iran United States Wales
Group C: Argentina Saudi Arabia Mexico Poland
Group D: France Australia Denmark Tunisia
Group E: Spain Costa Rica Germany Japan
Group F: Belgium Canada Morocco Croatia
Group G: Brazil Serbia Switzerland Cameroon
Group H: Portugal Ghana Uruguay South Korea