ZURICH // On their day of unbridled joy, the message from Qatar's jubilant bid team was clear. In handing the task of hosting the 2022 World Cup to a small Gulf state which had never even reached the final stages of the competition, Fifa had taken a bold step to expand the game of football.
When the decision was announced in a ceremony of high tension in Zurich yesterday, some media elements treated Qatar's success as a major shock.
Yet the signs had been growing that the bid was rather special.
In her eloquent final appeal, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, the wife of Qatar's ruler, had said: "From Doha to Damascus, the hope for a generation of youth will be shown not to be an elusive dream. The time is now."
As Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, in that infuriatingly slow way of his, pulled the name of the 2022 host from the envelope, the dream proved not to be elusive at all.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, the Qatar bid chief, told the Fifa executive: "Thank you for backing us and expanding the game. You will be proud of us and you will be proud of the Middle East."
How odd it had seemed that in this chilly Swiss city, hot weather should be such a dominant feature of debate on whether Fifa could put its faith in the first Arab, Muslim or Middle Eastern nation to organise a World Cup.
On the eve of voting on the venues of both the 2018 and 2022 events, snow ploughs had battled to keep streets and tramlines clear. Even beneath yesterday's blue skies, it was unmistakably winter as delegations, officials and more than 1,000 journalists and television teams gathered in the Zurich Exhibition Centre.
By common consent, Qatar's bid team had dealt impressively with the issue of climate, stressing the state-of-the-art technology that would keep temperatures at a comfortable 27°C at stadiums, training sites and supporters' areas.
The promise to dismantle stadiums after the event and re-erect them in developing countries was a smart, charitable payoff line. And a pivotal figure of world football, Zinedine Zidane, a World Cup winner with France but fiercely proud of his Algerian roots, had given Qatar an eminent ambassador.
The night before that campaign ended in triumph, the catchy chorus of a half-forgotten pop music hit, Kids of America, could be heard from a building close to the plush Baur Du Lac, hotel of choice for many involved in the bidding, including Qataris.
The song, with its English provenance but transatlantic theme, may have struck a pertinent note. England wanted 2018. The United States had eyes on 2022.
But the prizes went to new kids on the World Cup block, Russia and Qatar.
England's much-praised final presentation was not enough. The "motherland of football", as Blatter put it, will probably have to wait until at least 2030 to host its first World Cup since the tournament-winning glories of 1966.
And perhaps the fair-minded view of the US bid for 2022 was that it was little too soon after 1994, when the country last hosted the event.
The time, as Sheikha Mozah had urged, had come for somewhere else to show the world what it could do.
[ crandall@thenational.ae ]
Company Profile
Name: Direct Debit System
Started: Sept 2017
Based: UAE with a subsidiary in the UK
Industry: FinTech
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Elaine Jones
Number of employees: 8
Company Profile
Name: HyveGeo
Started: 2023
Founders: Abdulaziz bin Redha, Dr Samsurin Welch, Eva Morales and Dr Harjit Singh
Based: Cambridge and Dubai
Number of employees: 8
Industry: Sustainability & Environment
Funding: $200,000 plus undisclosed grant
Investors: Venture capital and government
How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
'Operation Mincemeat'
Director: John Madden
Cast: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfayden, Kelly Macdonald and Penelope Wilton
Rating: 4/5
The years Ramadan fell in May
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
The specs: Macan Turbo
Engine: Dual synchronous electric motors
Power: 639hp
Torque: 1,130Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Touring range: 591km
Price: From Dh412,500
On sale: Deliveries start in October
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
Confirmed bouts (more to be added)
Cory Sandhagen v Umar Nurmagomedov
Nick Diaz v Vicente Luque
Michael Chiesa v Tony Ferguson
Deiveson Figueiredo v Marlon Vera
Mackenzie Dern v Loopy Godinez
Tickets for the August 3 Fight Night, held in partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, went on sale earlier this month, through www.etihadarena.ae and www.ticketmaster.ae.
