In Doha, where Qatar is playing the last match of its World Cup this Tuesday, November 29, its face is displayed everywhere. On buildings, malls, even cars. He is the sheikh Tamim Ben Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, one of the men behind the controversial FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Since his accession, in 2013, to a throne for which he was not intended (he is only the second son of his father’s second wife), this former tennis player has never stopped playing sports a diplomatic weapon.
World Cup in Qatar: a journey behind the scenes
The goal: to use the enormous income from the sale of gas to buy clubs like PSG or organize competitions like the World Cup to exist on the international scene, forge alliances and thus protect themselves. Qatar is a wealthy state, although barely larger than Corsica, and surrounded by the two regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran. To journalists from the “Point”, the emir told that at the age of eleven, the images of the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein had traumatized him. From this perspective, making Doha a central crossroads for the sporting world appears to him to be an existential objective.
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