The Peninsula
Japan will be the first team to arrive in the country for Qatar 2022, Chief Operating Officer FIFA World Cup Colin Smith said during a ‘One Month to Go’ press conference yesterday.
“The first team to arrive, on the 7th of November, will be Japan. All 32 teams will be located in top class facilities in base camps throughout the country,” Smith said during the occasion, which also saw the attendance of a number of top officials including Eng. Yasir Al Jamal, Director General of Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) and Nasser Al Khater, Chief Executive Officer of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 LLC.
The Samurai Blues have selected Radisson Blu Hotel Doha as the home for the duration of the World Cup and will use Al Sadd Sports Club’s New Training Facility 1 as their base camp.
Following the arrival Japan, the top ranked team in Asia, the rest of the teams will descend on Qatar and will check in at their respective Team Base Camp Hotels at least five days before their first matches. The World Cup will be played from November 20 to December 18.
Japan are pitted in Group E, along with Spain, Germany and Costa Rica. They will face Germany in their opening match at the Khalifa International Stadium on November 23.
As part of the unique features of the FIFA World Cup 2022, there is no requirement of domestic flights or long hours of travelling. That will mean all the teams will be using the same residence and training facilities throughout the tournament, with all the teams being given access to similar top-class facilities at Team Base Camps. The extremely compact nature of Qatar 2022 will see 24 out of the 32 teams based within a 10km radius of each other.
England, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, The Netherlands, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the rest of the teams which will be based outside the concentrated ring of teams in Doha.
“Twenty four of the 32 teams are located within a 10-kilometre radius. So again, incredibly condensed and compact approach. Each of the 32 team base camps have been decorated with the colours or the identities of the teams that will be there. These base camps will represent the home away from home for the teams and we really want to do everything we can to provide the teams with the opportunities to provide us with their top level performances,” Smith said.
He also said that there will be top notch pitches available for training at all base camps.
“Pitches are of course, at the top of our priority list, both at the training sites and across the stadiums. In total, we’ve got 74 pitches that make up this World Cup, eight in the stadium, 32 in the base camps where there will be two training sites each, and also a referee at base camp,” the FIFA official said.