News round-up, Monday, November 21, 2022.
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Inside the Saudi Strategy to Keep the World Hooked on Oil
The kingdom is working to keep fossil fuels at the center of the world economy for decades to come by lobbying, funding research and using its diplomatic muscle to obstruct climate action.
Tabuchi reported from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to examine the kingdom’s vision for an oil-rich future.
Nov. 21, 2022
Shimmering in the desert is a futuristic research center with an urgent mission: Make Saudi Arabia’s oil-based economy greener, and quickly. The goal is to rapidly build more solar panels and expand electric-car use so the kingdom eventually burns far less oil.
But Saudi Arabia has a far different vision for the rest of the world. A major reason it wants to burn less oil at home is to free up even more to sell abroad. It’s just one aspect of the kingdom’s aggressive long-term strategy to keep the world hooked on oil for decades to come and remain the biggest supplier as rivals slip away.
In recent days, Saudi representatives pushed at the United Nations global climate summit in Egypt to block a call for the world to burn less oil, according to two people present at the meeting, saying that the summit’s final statement “should not mention fossil fuels.” The effort prevailed: After objections from Saudi Arabia and a few other oil producers, the statement failed to include a call for nations to phase out fossil fuels.
The kingdom’s plan for keeping oil at the center of the global economy is playing out around the world in Saudi financial and diplomatic activities, as well as in the realms of research, technology and even education. It is a strategy at odds with the scientific consensus that the world must swiftly move away from fossil fuels, including oil and gas, to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
The dissonance cuts to the heart of the Saudi kingdom. The government-controlled oil company, Saudi Aramco, already produces one out of every 10 of the world’s barrels of oil and envisions a world where it will be selling even more. Yet climate change and rising temperatures are already threatening life in the desert kingdom like few other places in the world.
Saudi Aramco has become a prolific funder of research into critical energy issues, financing almost 500 studies over the past five years, including research aimed at keeping gasoline cars competitive or casting doubt on electric vehicles, according to the Crossref database, which tracks academic publications. Aramco has collaborated with the United States Department of Energy on high-profile research projects including a six-year effort to develop more efficient gasoline and engines, as well as studies on enhanced oil recovery and other methods to bolster oil production.
Aramco also runs a global network of research centers including a lab near Detroit where it is developing a mobile “carbon capture” device — equipment designed to be attached to a gasoline-burning car, trapping greenhouse gases before they escape the tailpipe. More widely, Saudi Arabia has poured $2.5 billion into American universities over the past decade, making the kingdom one of the nation’s top contributors to higher education.
Visitors to a Saudi forum at the United Nations climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, this month.Credit...Kelvin Chan/Associated Press
Saudi interests have spent close to $140 million since 2016 on lobbyists and others to influence American policy and public opinion, making it one of the top countries spending on U.S. lobbying, according to disclosures to the Department of Justice tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Much of that has focused on bolstering the kingdom’s overall image, particularly after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by Saudi operatives. But the Saudi effort has also extended to building alliances in American Corn Belt states that produce ethanol — a product also threatened by electric cars.
Understand the Latest News on Climate Change
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A landmark deal at COP27. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of climate talks by agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the greenhouse gases from wealthy nations. The deal represented a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at the U.N. summit in Egypt.
U.S. midterm elections. The Democrats’ strong showing essentially ensures that President Biden’s signature climate change law will be fully implemented despite threats from some Republicans to block or undo it, though they’re likely to use their narrow House majority to try to slow it. Here are five main climate-related results from the midterm elections.
Tracking polluters. Climate TRACE, a nonprofit backed by Al Gore and other big environmental donors, is scouring data from satellites to track emissions down to individual power plants, oil fields and cargo ships. The group has cataloged 72,612 emitters and counting, creating a hyperlocal atlas of the human activities that are altering the planet’s chemistry.
U.S. climate threats. The effects of climate change are already “far-reaching and worsening” throughout the United States, posing risks to virtually every aspect of society, according to a draft report being circulated by the federal government. The United States has warmed 68 percent faster than Earth as a whole over the past 50 years, the draft report said.
A new response to rising seas. Consigned to marginal land more than a century ago by the U.S. government, some Native American tribes are trying to move to areas that are better protected from high water and extreme weather. In response, the Biden administration has created a program designed to help relocate communities threatened by climate change.
Behind closed doors at global climate talks, the Saudis have worked to obstruct climate action and research, in particular objecting to calls for a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels. In March, at a United Nations meeting with climate scientists, Saudi Arabia, together with Russia, pushed to delete a reference to “human-induced climate change” from an official document, in effect disputing the scientifically established fact that the burning of fossil fuels by humans is the main driver of the climate crisis.
“People would like us to give up on investment in hydrocarbons. But no,” said Amin Nasser, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive, because such a move would only wreak havoc with oil markets. The bigger threat was the “lack of investment in oil and gas,” he said.
A hydrogen vehicle fueling up in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.Credit...Maya Siddiqui/Bloomberg
In a statement, the Saudi Ministry of Energy said it expected that hydrocarbons such as oil, gas and coal would “continue to be an essential part of the global energy mix for decades,” but at the same time the kingdom had “made significant investments in measures to combat climate change.” The statement added, “Far from blocking progress at climate change talks, Saudi Arabia has long played a major role” in negotiations as well as in oil and gas industry groups working to lower emissions.
Saudi Arabia has said it supports the Paris climate agreement, which aims to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and intends to generate half its electricity from renewables by 2030. The kingdom also plans to plant 10 billion trees in the coming decades, and is building Neom, a futuristic carbon-free city that features speedy public transit, vertical farms and a ski resort.
And Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets. The government has invested in Lucid, the American electric vehicle company, and recently said it would form its own electric vehicle company, Ceer. It is investing in hydrogen, a cleaner alternative to oil and gas.
Still, the green transition at home has been slow. Saudi Arabia still generates less than 1 percent of its electricity from renewables, and it isn’t clear how it plans to plant billions of trees in one of the world’s driest regions.
All the while, the climate threat is getting harder to ignore. At current rates, human survival in the region will be impossible without continuous access to air-conditioning, researchers said last year.
Among researchers at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, a space station-like compound powered by 20,000 solar panels where discussion focuses on solar and wind projects or technologies like carbon capture, the more immediate trade-off is clear.
“If we keep consuming our own oil,” said Anvita Arora, who directs the center’s transport team, “we won’t have any oil left to sell.”
Inside the King Abdullah research center in Riyadh.Credit...Iman Al-Dabbagh for The New York Times
Saudis and the Corn Belt
In early 2020, Rob Port, who hosts the podcast “Plain Talk” on politics and current events in North Dakota, got a call from people representing the Saudi Embassy. Would he be interested in interviewing a Saudi spokesman about oil markets?
The call came from Dan Lederman at the LS2 group, a lobbying agency in Iowa that has also worked for agricultural and ethanol groups, and one of the few lobbying firms that stuck with the Saudis as others cut ties after the Khashoggi murder.
In May of that year, Fahad Nazer, a Saudi Embassy spokesman, appeared on Mr. Port’s podcast. “They were talking about how they have the same interests we do,” Mr. Port said, particularly an interest in “a thriving global oil market.”
That outreach was part of a major effort by LS2group, on behalf of the kingdom, that has reached states including the Dakotas, Texas, Iowa and Ohio. For a retainer of more than $125,000 a month, LS2group targeted local radio hosts, academics, event planners, sports-industry officials, a former football player and a ski and snowboard club owner, according to filings with the Justice Department.
LS2, a lobbying firm in Iowa, has helped promote Saudi interests in corn-producing states.Credit...Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times
Much of that campaign has been on general topics, like the history of close relations with the United States. However, states like Iowa, the nation’s top ethanol producer, could be fertile ground for the Saudis’ view on electric vehicles, said Jeff M. Angelo, a former Iowa state senator who now hosts a talk show and was approached by Saudi representatives.
“Ethanol producers here in Iowa are saying the same thing: ‘Isn’t it terrible that the Biden administration is forcing you to buy an electric car when we could be producing biofuels right here in Iowa, and making money, and supporting our farmers, and being energy independent?’” he said.
Another facet in Saudi Aramco’s effort to perpetuate gasoline cars is the research center near Detroit. There, researchers are working on an innovative device. Attached to a car, it would suck some of the planet-warming carbon dioxide from the exhaust before it can rise into the atmosphere and warm the world.
The prototype, developed by an Aramco lab, traps only a portion of emissions. But it is part of an effort to keep gasoline cars competitive. Transportation uses two-thirds of the world’s petroleum, so any shift away from gasoline vehicles would greatly eat into oil demand.
It is a shift that Aramco does not want to see.
In Detroit, Aramco is working on carbon-capture devices that would fit on vehicles.Credit...Cydni Elledge for The New York Times
“Are electric vehicles going to doom oil?” Khalid A. Al-Falih, Saudi Arabia’s minister of investment and former chairman of Saudi Aramco, said at an energy forum in 2019. “The answer is no.”
Saudi Aramco has teamed up with major automakers, like Hyundai, to develop an “ultra lean-burn” fuel for hybrid gas-electric vehicles that would still use petroleum. And some Saudi funded research throws doubt on electric vehicles.
In June, the Department of Energy also released the findings of its six-year initiative to research cleaner gasoline engines and fuels, which said that gasoline cars “will dominate new vehicle sales for decades.” Aramco and the department have also collaborated on technical papers on methods to increase the flow of oil from wells.
Sequel to ‘La La Land’
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, was incredulous. The International Energy Agency, set up a half-century ago to ensure the security of global energy supplies, had just sounded oil’s death knell: It said the world would need to immediately stop approving new oil and gas fields, and to quickly phase out gasoline vehicles, to avert the worst effects of climate change.
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Prince Abdulaziz compared that notion to a Hollywood movie. “It’s a sequel to ‘La La Land,” he quipped at a news conference.
Saudi Arabia continues to explore for oil and gas. It pumps oil at an extremely low price of about $7.50 a barrel, beating almost every major rival. Compared to fracking in the United States, for example, and the extensive flaring of methane that entails, Saudi production is also cleaner than competitors.
Last year, Saudi Arabia joined the United States, Canada, Norway and Qatar on a plan to further reduce drilling emissions. Saudi Aramco said last year it would reach “net zero” by 2050, essentially pledging to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from oil extraction and production. However, that pledge excludes oil’s main source of planet-warming emissions, those produced by burning it.
“They see that as an advantage. They think that if buyers start discriminating between dirtier barrels and cleaner barrels, Saudi Arabia looks a lot better than oil produced in the Permian Basin in the United States” or other places, said Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Saudi officials say that a rapid transition to renewables and to cleaner electric vehicles would bring economic chaos, a view they say has been vindicated by he recent turmoil in the global energy market amid a supply shortfall and surging prices.
“Adopting unrealistic policies to reduce emissions by excluding main sources of energy will lead in coming years to unprecedented inflation and an increase in energy prices, and rising unemployment and a worsening of serious social and security problems,” Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, said in July at a United States-Arab summit in Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia’s strategy is playing out at global climate talks.
Back in March, when, Saudi Arabia and Russia pushed to delete a reference to “human-induced climate change” from a policy document at a United Nations meeting, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist leading the session, fought back and won.
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the climate,” she later said. “This is the reason why I took the floor to argue.”
The Saudi intervention was the latest example of what other negotiators describe as a yearslong effort to slow progress by homing in on scientific uncertainties, downplaying the consequences, emphasizing the costs of climate action and delaying negotiations on procedural points.
Last year, Saudi Arabia successfully helped strike a sentence from a United Nations report that called for an active phaseout of fossil fuels. The statement “limits options for decision makers,” a Saudi adviser to the kingdom’s minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said, according to documents leaked by the environmental group Greenpeace. “Omit the sentence.”
“They have a strategic agenda, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, “which is they don’t want anything to happen.”
At the latest round of talks in Egypt, Saudi Arabia highlighted an alternative vision, one that relies on large-scale carbon capture and storage. By 2027, the kingdom will build a facility capable of storing as much carbon dioxide as 2 million gasoline cars would emit in a year.
That would be a breakthrough, because carbon capture has yet to be proven at scale. Yet it was Saudi Arabia’s way of preparing for a warming world, said Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s climate envoy. “In Saudi Arabia, we’re committed to being ahead of it.”
Former Arab enemies re-united in VIP seats at World Cup opening ceremony
On Sunday, the first day of the competition, the event allowed Qatari monarch Tamim Al-Thani to stage his country's return to prominence in the Middle East.
By Benjamin Barthe
Q atar's Emir Tamim Al-Thani makes a speech from the VIP section at the opening match of the football World Cup in Doha, November 20, 2022. MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP
In major international events, who sits where in the VIP section is a diplomatic exercise requiring tact. Organizers want to avoid a faux pas, and bring people together. On Sunday, November 20, during the opening ceremony for the football World Cup in the Al-Bayt stadium in Al-Khor, Qatari monarch Tamim Al-Thani played the game with skill.
In the VIP section, the sovereign found himself alongside two leaders who, less than two years ago, dreamed of bringing his country to its knees: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as "MBS," and Egyptian President Abdal Fattah el-Sissi. Their presence, a nod to the World Cup slogan "Football unites the world," allowed Doha to stage its return to prominence in the Middle East.
Between 2017 and 2021, Saudi Arabia and Egypt contributed to the diplomatic and commercial blockade imposed on Qatar, which was stigmatized at the time as the Gulf's troublemaker, guilty of consorting with Islamists and doing deals with Iranian enemies. The cold war in the region reached such a peak that at one point the Saudi press reported on a project to dig a canal between the kingdom and Qatar and dump nuclear waste in it.
The resilience shown by Doha and the election of Joe Biden in the United States, who was highly critical of the Saudi leader, convinced MBS to lift the embargo, which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had also joined.
In a signal of the thawing of relations between Riyadh and Doha since that crisis, MBS wore a broad smile during the ceremony and even put a Qatari scarf around his neck. According to Le Monde sources, the heir to the throne, who is passionate about football, plans to attend several other World Cup matches, including Saudi Arabia's first game on Tuesday against Argentina.
Two important absences
In another sign of the détente thanks to football, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a supporter of Qatar during the blockade, was photographed greeting Egyptian President Mr. el-Sissi. This is the first direct contact between the two men, who have been at loggerheads for nearly a decade. Mr. Erdogan refused to recognize Mr. el-Sissi's legitimacy after he came to power in 2013, overthrowing President Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Doha's carefully-orchestrated diplomacy nevertheless suffered from two important absences: that of Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates and former mastermind of the blockade, who was represented by the Emir of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rachid Al-Maktoum; and that of Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the King of Bahrain, who still has frosty relations with his Qatari neighbor.
No Western official was present on Sunday, a sign of the controversies caused by the tournament in Western countries. But the American Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected in Doha on Monday for the United States' opening match against Wales. It was still uncertain on Sunday whether or not there would be an Iranian representative for the country's match against England, also on Monday.
According to a well-informed source, a few weeks ago the Qatari foreign minister half-jokingly suggested to Mr. Blinken that he arrange a meeting with his Iranian counterpart during the scheduled match between Iran and the USA on Tuesday, November 29, in an attempt to resuscitate the Iranian nuclear talks. Since then, given the intensification of anti-regime protests in Iran and the accompanying outrage, this suggestion has probably been filed under "faux pas to avoid."
Benjamin Barthe
The Winter World CupQatar Has Spent Years Preparing, But Is the World Ready?
Qatar has spent several years developing its national team ahead of the World Cup, which kicks off on Sunday. The global public, though, is skeptical of the event. Nobody quite knows what to expect.
By Marc Hujer und Gerhard Pfeil
It’s an afternoon about two weeks before the World Cup is set to begin and there is no one to be seen in the Doha Sports Park. No fans, no masses of people, not a soul around to hear the admonishments coming from the speakers.
Khalifa International Stadium, which will host England against Iran on Monday, the first full day of this year’s tournament, with Germany versus Japan to follow on Wednesday, lies shrouded in the haze of the midday heat. Aside from a couple of workers who have been assigned the task of painting a maze on the ground for children, the site is vacant.
The stadium loudspeakers are all dangling from their wires, but they are nevertheless operational. A man’s voice can be heard coming from them, reading out in English the "penalties" that accrue for various improprieties. An initial soundcheck ahead of the tournament.
DER SPIEGEL 47/2022
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 47/2022 (November 19th, 2022) of DER SPIEGEL.
The voice says: 10,000 rials for garbage thrown on the street.
The voice says: 10,000 rials for leaving behind leftover food.
It keeps going, listing other infractions, all related to littering, though when it comes to the penalty, it doesn’t really matter what one leaves behind: chewing gum, drink cans or newspapers, it all comes with a fine of 10,000 rials. Which is quite a chunk if change. The equivalent of 2,650 euros, to be precise.
But how strictly will it be enforced? How concerned are they about the crowds of foreigners that will soon be descending on their country?
On the one hand, you have Qatar, an inflexible host country that ignores human rights, treats workers like Western industrialized countries did in the distant past and still views homosexuality as a crime.
On the other is an indignant global public, with some having threatened to boycott the event, insisting they won’t be tuning in this time to watch the spectacle. In Germany, a number of bars and restaurants have said they won’t be showing the games in their venues.
It remains to be seen, however, if they will actually follow through once the games begin. What will happen if the German team is actually successful and advances beyond the group phase to the quarters, the semis and perhaps even the final? Will there still be people in the country like Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, who said in a recent interview that for her, mulled wine simply doesn’t fit with football? A statement, it should be said, that doesn’t make all that much sense given the fact that German football stadiums are just as full for December league games as they are in spring.
Will everyone continue to adhere to their principles once the ball actually starts rolling in Qatar?
The Qataris have said on a number of occasions that they have plenty of experience with Western double standards, not least from the Germans, who have never shied away from earning a bit of money in Qatar. A subsidiary of the German rail company Deutsche Bahn, for example, is heading up the construction of Doha’s subway system. Siemens, meanwhile, is taking care of the technology in the stadiums. Questions about human rights weren’t much of an issue in those deals.
Football Development Aid from Europe
The Germans, says one Qatari who has long had tight business relations with the country, are far more preferable to him than the French, who just want to sell their products. The Germans, on the other hand, he says, will also sell their technology if they find it advantageous.
Qatar has spent billions on preparations for the World Cup, but the country has also invested maximum effort in ensuring that its national team can actually compete. And part of that effort has entailed bringing in expertise from Europe.
Qatar is anything but a traditional football country, and it has never before qualified for a World Cup. It also doesn’t have a fan culture of the kind seen in Europe, with turnout for Qatari league games rarely more than 1,000 spectators. Which doesn’t mean, however, that the sport plays no role in the country.
By 7 a.m., the numerous artificial grass fields in Doha are already full, with players coming out early to beat the heat. On television, meanwhile, fixtures from the English Premier League are broadcast almost constantly, along with games from the Qatari Stars League, founded in 1963 as the country’s top league for men and home to 12 sides. But excitement alone isn’t enough to be able to compete in the World Cup.
Not far from where the Khalifa International Stadium now stands, the Qatari state opened up the Aspire Academy in 2005, a modern training center for top athletes. It was envisioned as a place to develop local players to compete at the highest levels without having to buy in talent from abroad – as Qatar did in 2015 when the handball world championships were held in the country.
When it came to football, Qatar wanted to go to battle with a team it had developed itself. Made in Qatar.
The decision to develop players in the country was taken following the failed attempt to improve the quality of local players by sending them overseas. Until just a few years ago, the Qatar Football Association had been sending its best players abroad to partner teams in Europe, such as Linzer ASK in Austria or the Belgian team KAS Eupen. But the association quickly realized that its players were having trouble establishing themselves and were spending most of their time on the bench.
So the QFA brought the players back home and imported well-known stars from European leagues, like Xavi from Spain or Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, to raise the level of play back home. The country’s own talent was given preferential treatment in the hopes that they would ripen into top players.
Once Qatar was chosen back in 2010 to host the 2022 World Cup, the QFA started the process of constructing a team for the tournament. European trainers were brought in, including German talent developer Stephan Hildebrandt. He would go on to spent five years in Qatar, before returning to Germany in 2019.
We visited Hildebrandt, 49, in early September at his lakeside home outside of Berlin. Earlier in his career, Hildebrandt was head of Hamburger SV’s youth academy and then sport director for Energie Cottbus before he went to Qatar in 2014. He says he was looking for a new challenge. "It was difficult early on," he says. In Qatar, he says, there are only around 55,000 registered players, in contrast to several million in Germany. Hildebrandt and his assistants scoured the country’s schools, sports halls and clubs for talented players. The best players received a spot in the Aspire Academy. For the trainer team of Félix Sánchez, a Spaniard who now coaches the Qatari national team, the facility offered first-class amenities, including watered, artificial grass fields and huge fitness rooms.
A Football App for the Emir
But the players, says Hildebrandt, would continually find excuses for why they couldn’t show up for practice. "A traffic jam, the heat, a sandstorm, anything they could think of," he says. Most Qataris, he explains, are wealthy and don’t need to work particularly hard to earn money or advance in society.
At some point, though, the coaches were able to awaken the ambition of their handpicked players. The prospect of achieving fame through football became a powerful motivation. They trained up to eight times a week at the academy. Hildebrandt says that Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, a football fanatic, was able to follow the team’s development through an app developed specifically for him.
“Please go, immediately! The Qataris aren’t joking!”
Austrian security guards
In 2019, Qatar managed the shocking feat of winning the Asian Cup. In preparation for the World Cup in their homeland, the Qatari team spent several months in training camps in Spain and Austria. The players, though, are almost completely shielded from the outside world. A team of ghosts.
When the team spent the summer in Leogang, an Austrian town not far from Salzburg, the football pitch on the outskirts of town was carefully surrounded by screens so that nobody could see what was going on inside. The coaches, including the German goalkeeper trainer Julius Büscher, stayed in hotels in town and would walk to the pitch each day. The players, many of whom were lodged with families in the surrounding area, would drive to practice in rental cars.
No spectators were allowed in. And those who tried to get inside anyway were immediately intercepted by guards. "Please go, immediately! The Qataris aren’t joking!" Later, when the team was in Vienna, attempts to speak with players or coaches likewise proved unsuccessful. Instead of presenting the team’s stars, like team captain Hassan Al-Haydos, as ambassadors for the country and allowing them to speak about football in Qatar, they were hidden from view – likely out of concern that they might trigger yet another debate by saying the wrong thing.
Hildebrandt isn’t surprised. He is a cosmopolitan type and kept a journal during his time in Qatar, which is full of bizarre and thoughtful observations. Hildebrandt is fully aware of the deficits in Qatar, like the lack of women’s rights and the exploitation of foreign laborers. He met his wife in Doha, a woman from the Philippines who worked in a hotel and who sued her employer for poor treatment. She spent time in a pre-deportation custody, but a court then ruled in her favor, and she found a higher-paid job in a different company.
Hildebrandt is familiar with the dark sides of Qatar, the gigantomania and the unbridled consumerism of the elites. But he is also bothered by "Western cultural imperialism," the ignorance he sees in many Europeans and their self-righteousness. "I have a problem with the expectation that what we developed over centuries – the rule of law, secularization, open societies – should work perfectly all over the world in the blink of an eye," Hildebrandt says. He would like to see more understanding for a country that he believes is on the right track.
Hildebrandt is optimistic about Team Qatar advancing out of its group, which also includes Ecuador, the Netherlands and Senegal. Many of the preparation matches ahead of the World Cup were rather disappointing. In September, Qatar lost to Croatia’s U-23 national team 0:3 in a match played in Vienna.
Many Qataris nevertheless have high expectations for their team, including a former businessman who is a member of the Consultative Assembly, the country’s legislative body. Sitting in the lobby of the InterContinental Doha – The City, he says he can’t understand why the world isn’t more excited about the beginning of the World Cup. Why German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is so critical of his country. And why Paris Saint-Germain, the team that the Qatar Investment Authority purchased, the team for which both Neymar and Messi play, didn’t advertise the World Cup even once. Not even with a patch on the arms of their jerseys, for example.
When asked if it would be a success if the Qatari team managed to make it out of the group phase, the assembly member quickly responds: "It would be a success if we made it into the final."
Is he serious? He smiles. But he doesn’t laugh.