By Andrew Warshaw
February 7 – Qatar’s World Cup organisers have described a fact-finding mission to England as a key development in what will be a “milestone year” in terms of planning for the 2022 tournament.
World Cup officials are among a high-profile trade delegation that has been touring stadiums including Wembley and meeting key British business stakeholders in order to gain as much knowledge as possible about stadium design and the operational side of staging a major sports event.
The business part of the week-long stay, made in conjunction with UK Trade and Investment, winds up today (Friday) with a visit to England’s state-of-the-art National Football Centre before members of the Qatari delegation take in a Premier League fixture at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium on Saturday to assess fan experience before returning home the following day.
“It’s been an important step in learning about the construction of world-class stadiums,” said a Qatari spokesman. “We’ve also met a lot of companies who were involved in the delivery of the London 2012 Olympics and looked at how London benefitted in terms of tourism.”
By an unfortunate co-incidence, the Qatari visit took place during a two-day strike on the capital’s tube network, hardly the best promotion of London as a tourist destination. But officials said this had no bearing on talks with potential commercial partners and assessing technical priorities before starting to design their own stadiums for 2022.
A similar trade delegation has already visited the United States and the Qatari spokesman said: “2014 is a milestone year for us. We’re going to be announcing four more stadium designs which will mean five in total under initial different phases of construction.”
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