WORLD Cup fans are facing sweltering 37C container cabins with broken air conditioning units, dirty water and builders still working on the unfinished camps.
Qatar has a popped up a number of temporary villages to help accommodate the more than one million fans expected to descend for the sporting extravaganza.
But despite billions of pounds being ploughed into infrastructure – including an entirely new city – some of it appears to have been hastily knocked together on a tight budget.
Sun man Oliver Harvey forked out £175 to spend the night at the Fan Village Cabins Free Zone just outside of Doha.
The tiny container-style cabins house two people in a cramped bedroom with an en suite shower – and the metal structures are left baking beneath the blazing sun.
“[It is] constructed on a site which resembled an unfinished car park,” said Oliver.
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Staying in cabin E11-15, the site is wedged between two busy roads and is around 30 minutes away from the luxurious hotel being enjoyed by England.
After opening up his digs for the night, our reporter was met with a blazing wave of hot air as he stepped inside the “shipping container” cabin.
He found the air conditioner was not even hooked up – with the tube connecting it to the outside world not even attached and a gaping hole left in the wall of his cabin.
The container did have a desk-style fan attached to the wall – but it only offered light relief from the insufferable heat.
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Our man came prepared, and the sweating Oliver got out his thermometer to measure the staggering temperature.
The mercury quickly climbed to nearly 38C.
“It [was] really stifling,” said Oliver, “We are going to be ‘oven ready’ England fans after a night in here.”
When he did manage to get the aircon working, it was incredibly noisy and would made it hard to sleep.
And it only managed to drop the temperature down to 31C.
Oliver went to test the shower and sink, only to find it was piping hot and the water appeared to be dirty.
Finding he could not spend another “sweltering second” inside his cabin, Oliver headed out to explore the rest of the fan village.
What he found was rows upon rows of hundreds of metal boxes arranged on a flat, barren piece of land which appeared to be little more than a disused car park.
Beyond hunkering down between the rows of cabins, there was very little shade.
And that made sitting on prearranged bean bags around the village’s big screen extremely unappealing as the sun beat down.
Low-flying planes roared overhead in the blue skies in what was quite a strange and bleak World Cup experience.
Oliver managed to find some other fans, running into two men from Japan.
They agreed their room was “tiny, hot and expensive”.
“I don’t like it”, one said.
And the two Japan fans admitted they had a staggering 16 NIGHTS at the camp to endure, questioning whether they would even be able to get to sleep.
“Outrageous,” they laughed.
Oliver also ran into two Mexican fans who, despite being in good spirits, agreed it was incredibly hot in their cabin.
Continuing to explore, our man decided to settle down for a meal.
He picked himself up a pepperoni pizza for £15.
And despite the grub being quite small with just four pieces of pepperoni on it, Oliver admitted it was “not too bad”.
After enjoying his lunch, he then found himself in a massive unfinished grey gravel expanse in the middle of the village.
Workers were still setting up the giant marquee – which Oliver wasn’t sure it was exactly meant to be, maybe a dining area?
Qatar has already faced questions over organisation of the World Cup – with reports weeks before the start that the nation simply was not ready.
Confusion over the sale of beer, infrastructure problems and reports of crowd trouble at the fanzone have already surfaced.
The tiny country is expected to welcome more than one million fans during the tournament – when the country only has a population of 2.9million.
Billions have been spent to try and ready the nation for its first attempt at holding an event of this scale.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
