Sunday
Sick. Sad. Drained. Coughing up screeds of green phlegm. The morning after England’s defeat by France coincides with a heavy case of Doha flu. This has been a place of coughs and chills. Doctors say Doha has basically never had this many people in it and people = germs. Descriptions from sufferers range from being run over by a truck to my own strain, which feels like being expertly beaten up by special service agents using bludgeons, snooker cues and socks full of wet sand. My flatmate Jonathan Wilson asks a woman in the lobby for help finding a doctor. She marches upstairs, squeezes my arm and says firmly, yes, you have a fever, you will be fine, drink one cup of coffee. OK, thanks. So … you’re a doctor? “No,” she says. “But I am Indian.”
Monday
It is an interesting thing about Doha. The people you meet are routinely nice, friendly and hospitable but none of them are Qataris. This is a deeply private class of citizen, although you can identify them by their cars, which really are extraordinary. Here is a Lincoln Navigator barrelling down a dust road. Here is a £250,000 Lamborghini Urus picking up the shopping. Owning a massive 4X4 feels like an act of simple patriotism around here. Meanwhile Qatar is heating as quickly as any place on Earth besides the Arctic and could be uninhabitable by 2070. But, hey, Mercedes G-Wagon, bro. Probably this counts as dramatic irony.
Tuesday
Lionel Messi +10 defeat Croatia at the Lusail Stadium in Qatar’s new super-Croydon city, which is made all the more mind-blowing by the presence of Argentina’s fans, who stage a devotional procession, holding up a severed cardboard Diego Maradona head. Maradona would have loved all this. I saw him at the last World Cup in Moscow gesturing wildly in a box, then resting in a stairwell at half-time, head between his legs. Here was one of the great football people but a man who quite clearly didn’t want to be disturbed. Instead I smelled him as I walked past, absorbing cells of pure Maradona via my nasal cavity. He smelled of fresh sweat and something sweet, pineapple or maybe lime. Have you ever smelled a World Cup-winning footballer? Send your impressions to the address below.
Wednesday
France versus Morocco at Al Bayt Stadium, the final trip to the house of pain. It is hard to explain how terrible Al Bayt is. A massive fibreglass replica tent, plonked on the edge of nothingness so Qatar could meet its bidding requirements, but with no connections, no trains, nothing on the human scale. The brain-chilling AC roars constantly. The whole thing is ringed with endless fences. After the first 2am finish here five of us tried to walk towards a distant taxi stop but ended up following Wilson as he strode out into the darkness on a vast sandy desert loop, coattails flapping charismatically. Oh, and it was designed by Albert Speer Jr. The Moroccan fans did their best, but they were more than it deserved.
Thursday
Everyone is excited about Messi v France. But then everyone loves Messi, from the in-house broadcaster to the kids playing football on scrubland dressed in the universal Messi shirt. The kids are watched by cats, which are one of the nice things about this place, and a kind of shared wild resource. Dave, the cat adopted by England’s players, is typical of the type: skinny, sleek, mischievous. They live outside, meowing for food, demanding attention and basically just hanging out. There’s a tiny ginger cat that curls up and goes to sleep in the doorway to the metro station. No one seems to mind.
Friday
The closing Gianni Infantino press conference: a massive disappointment. He’s off his game. There are no zingers. He doesn’t “feel like” anything. None of the troublesome members of the press are allowed questions, which is a shame as the man from the New York Times was going to ask him about his weirdly close and gluttonous relationship with Salt Bae, the meat-slicing guy who sells gold leaf steaks to idiots. Infantino looks hugely relieved this inferno of weirdness is almost over. Well, it’s his inferno.
Saturday
France’s players have Doha flu. I have never felt so close to a group of elite athletes. At least five of them seem to have it, Ibrahima Konaté worst of all. This is a serious factor for the final. It’s an exhausting illness. Although, lads, if you’re reading this: one cup of coffee.
