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      Pouring Through a Crisis: How Budweiser Salvaged Its World Cup

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      Taken by surprise by Qatar’s decision to ban beer at stadiums, the company remade its marketing strategy in real time.DOHA, Qatar — The theme at the luxury W hotel in central Doha is beer. Budweiser beer. The walls are festooned with Budweiser labels. “Budweiser” is painted in enormous script along the check-in desk. There’s a “Budweiser Player of the Match” corner, where armchair soccer stars can take selfies while hoisting a fake trophy against a Budweiser background. Bathed in red and white, the place has the feel of a giant beer can.Budweiser, which has been the official beer sponsor of the World Cup for the last 36 years, remade the hotel into what it called “a home away from home experience” in anticipation of the 2022 tournament. That was before the moment, two days before the opening match, when Qatar’s government threw Budweiser’s carefully crafted (and quite expensive) beer-selling plans into disarray by suddenly forbidding the sale of alcohol in or around the tournament stadiums during the event.The dismaying nature of the situation — the abrupt contravention of a plan years in the making, the 11th-hour dismantling of the elaborate Budweiser tents at the matches, the financial and related consequences for a longtime tournament sponsor, the public nature of it all — was aptly articulated at the time by Budweiser itself.“Well, this is awkward,” the company wrote in a tweet — which it then promptly deleted, both illustrating and compounding its point.But, like the ghostly tweet, preserved forever in screenshots marked with “lol”s, Budweiser remains a presence at the World Cup, albeit in a watered-down way.Certain fan zones were among the limited places where fans could buy alcoholic beers.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesWhile the stadiums have been scrubbed of regular beer, they are awash in stacks of alcohol-free Budweiser Zero. Ads for the drink play on a loop on stadium screens, and refrigerators full of it sit within arm’s reach at concession stands, right next to the Coca-Cola.But given the average fan’s attitude toward the usefulness of nonalcoholic beer as a sports-experience enhancer (“Why?” asked a fan at Lusail Stadium on a recent night, when asked if he had tried one yet), the available quantities would seem to reflect wishful thinking as much as responsible drinking.At Lusail, the signs next to the Budweiser Zero duly noted that “Budweiser is proud to serve its products in compliance with the local rules and regulations.”“Proud” is one way of putting it.“I’m just glad it wasn’t us,” said a representative for another FIFA sponsor, who spoke on condition that neither she nor her company be identified, saying that she did not want to publicly criticize the Qatari government. “Qatari regulations are very strict and top-down, and it’s hard when you feel that the regulations can change so abruptly.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Two Favorites, Two Underdogs, Too Good

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      France and Argentina entered the World Cup as contenders, but Croatia and Morocco have proved to be worthy challengers for the title.DOHA, Qatar — Even Didier Deschamps, France’s ordinarily gnomic coach, seemed a little insouciant in the small hours of Sunday morning. His team had edged past England in a tense, taut sort of a game, the kind that made the insistence of the stadium’s hype man, immediately after the final whistle, that it had been “a lot of fun” for everyone seem more than a touch discordant.Deschamps’s chipper mood was easily explained. With his team’s 2-1 victory, he had achieved the only target even the best team in the world, the reigning champion, had dared to set before this World Cup. France had outlasted not only England but Brazil, Spain and Germany, too. It had made the final four. Whatever happens from this point on counts as extra credit.Both of the semifinals follow largely the same template, pitting one of the teams who arrived in Qatar as an established contender against one of the tournament’s largely unheralded outsiders. The mention of that framing was the only thing that dispelled Deschamps’s good cheer. “Any of the four teams can win it,” he said.Given everything that has happened over the last three weeks to bring the World Cup to this point, it is hard to disagree.Argentina vs. CroatiaTuesday, 2 p.m. ET, Lusail StadiumArgentina recovered from an early stumble and never looked back.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe emotion pulsing through Argentina’s players and fans alike has never been far from the surface in Qatar. Its form, its shape, has changed over the course of five games, ranging from the caterwauling after an opening defeat to Saudi Arabia to the belligerence of a narrow victory over the Netherlands, taking in relief, hope, euphoria and pride along the way.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      What Happened to the Qatar Women’s National Team?

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      A squad that featured in the host nation’s bid to host the World Cup in 2010 hasn’t played a game in eight years.DOHA, Qatar — The last official soccer match that the Qatar women’s national team played was on April 19, 2014. Hagar Nader Nessim Aziz Saleh, who was only 15 years old at the time, can hardly remember it now. It was a little cold that day, she recalled, and Qatar was playing in Amman, Jordan, at the West Asian Football Federation Women’s Championship.She remembered screaming and celebrating when Dana al-Jassim scored in extra time, in the 92nd minute, one of Qatar’s only goals of the tournament. Her team lost that day, 8-2. It has not played an official match since.There have been some friendly matches and several cultural exchanges, including a visit from players on an American women’s team in 2020, and a trip to New York and San Francisco earlier this year to learn about women’s soccer in the United States. There are photos of the team, in maroon tracksuits and white jerseys with the official patch for the Q.F.A., the Qatar Football Association. But the jerseys are dated by the sponsor, Burrda, whose partnership with the soccer federation ended years ago.Other than that, there is hardly any trace of a national women’s soccer team in Qatar, even as the country hosts the men’s World Cup. There is no mention of a women’s team on the Qatar Football Association website, and there is no team listed on the FIFA women’s rankings. There’s a Wikipedia page and a curious Instagram account called Women’s Football Qatar with 106 followers.The World Cup in Qatar seemed a good chance to ask: Where did the team go?Members of the Qatar women’s national team at a cafe in Doha, Qatar.Allison McCann/The New York TimesOrigins of a TeamIn 2001, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser al-Missned — the wife of the emir at the time, and the mother of the current emir — established the Qatar Women’s Sport Committee to oversee all sports for women and girls. In 2009, the national women’s soccer team was created, just as Qatar was preparing its bid to host the 2022 World Cup.A year later, and only weeks before FIFA was to choose the host of the 2022 World Cup, the women’s national team played its first-ever official match. It did not go well. Beaten by 17-0 by Bahrain at the Arabia Women’s Cup, the team went on to lose to Syria and Palestine in the same tournament, by double-digit scores each time. But there was a team and a record of its games.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Brazil Feels the Familiar Sting of Failure

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      DOHA, Qatar — Once more, then, Brazil’s World Cup ends in the dance the country has come to know better than any other. The players were still cocooned in the locker room at the Education City Stadium, trying to process the bitterness and regret of elimination at the hands of Croatia, but the fingers were already being pointed, the blame being assigned.The primary target, of course, was the same as it always is: the coach. Just a couple of days earlier, back when things were light and fun, Tite had been at pains not to take too much of the credit. Brazil might have been strutting and gliding through the tournament, its jersey shining as brightly as it had for a generation, but the 62-year-old Tite did not want anyone thinking it was because of him.He was, if anything, nothing but a facilitator. The glory should go to the players, he said, the ones who were out on the field, making things happen, sweeping the country to within touching distance of that elusive sixth World Cup. “It is the athletes,” he said. “They are the whole painting.”Brazil’s Tite consoled his players, but he could not appease his critics.Matthew Childs/ReutersSuch is the bargain coaches make. Tite did not feel entitled to any of the credit, but as soon as things grew dark and heavy, he was the primary outlet for much of the blame. “It’s not about being a hero or a villain,” he said, his devastated players still not yet able to face the public. “But I understand that I am the most responsible.”There was no shortage of people willing to agree with him. In the immediate aftermath of the game, Tite had been sufficiently composed to offer what was, by some distance, the most reasonable, the most rational, analysis of Brazil’s elimination. “When their goalkeeper is the best player on the field, the game is talking to you,” he said.He was right, too. Brazil created a flurry of chances against Croatia. With a little more luck or a little more poise, it would have been out of sight long before penalties, long before Bruno Petkovic’s equalizer, long before extra time. “Sometimes we have a great performance, we shoot at goal, and the ball deviates,” he said. It is cruel, of course. “But it is normal.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Grant Wahl Dies at World Cup After Collapsing at Argentina Game

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      Grant Wahl, who in his career covered soccer for Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports and CBS, was in Qatar for his eighth World Cup.Grant Wahl, a highly regarded soccer journalist who wrote extensively on the game, died Friday in Qatar, where he was covering the World Cup quarterfinal match between Argentina and the Netherlands in Doha.Wahl’s agent, Tim Scanlan, confirmed the death in a phone interview on Friday night. Scanlan said that Wahl had been in the press tribune in the closing minutes of a quarterfinal game when he went into acute distress.He is believed to have died, Scanlan said, at a hospital in Qatar or while he was being taken to one, after feeling unwell as the tournament proceeded.“He wasn’t sleeping well, and I asked him if he tried melatonin or anything like,” Scanlan said. “He said, ‘I just need to like relax for a bit.’”Wahl was in the midst of his eighth World Cup, with an aggressive schedule of reporting and appearances.Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, also confirmed the death in a post on Twitter. Wahl, 48, began his professional journalism career in 1996, at Sports Illustrated, where he worked for 24 years. He initially covered both college basketball and soccer — he wrote a famed 2002 Sports Illustrated cover story on LeBron James, who was then a junior in high school — but over the next two decades transitioned exclusively to soccer, attending and writing about each World Cup, growing in prominence as the sport grew in the United States.“Grant’s passion for soccer and commitment to elevating its profile across our sporting landscape played a major role in helping to drive interest in and respect for our beautiful game,” the United States Soccer Federation said in a statement Friday night. Don Garber, the commissioner of Major League Soccer, wrote that Wahl “was a kind and caring person whose passion for soccer and dedication to journalism were immeasurable.”In recent days, Wahl wrote about struggles with his health during a run of coverage that, he said, typically left room for about five hours of sleep a night.“My body finally broke down on me,” he wrote on Monday. “Three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work can do that to you.”What had seemed to be a common cold for more than a week, he said, had “turned into something more severe” around Dec. 3, when the United States played the Netherlands.“I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort,” he wrote, adding that he had tested negative for the coronavirus. Medical officials in Qatar, he said, thought he had bronchitis. The antibiotics he received, he said, appeared to work, backed up by 12 hours of sleep.On Wednesday night, he hosted a gathering at his apartment to mark his birthday, which Scanlan said was on Thursday. More

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      A Two-Goal Lead Disappears, So Argentina Has to Do It the Hard Way

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      LUSAIL, Qatar — Argentina almost did it the easy way. For a while, Lionel Messi and his teammates were coasting. They had a two-goal lead against the Netherlands, and just a few minutes to see out. They were comfortable. And then, all of a sudden, they were not. They got there in the end, of course, but it would not be Argentina if there was not a little suffering.It had all seemed like such smooth sailing. Argentina had won even as its battalions of fans, decked out in sky blue and white, were still filling the steep, banked stands of the Lusail Stadium: A few miles away, Brazil had been eliminated by Croatia, Argentina’s fiercest rival and the most intimidating obstacle on its route to the final vanquished in one fell swoop.Barely a couple of hours later, the second victory seemed secure. Messi had created Argentina’s first goal, threading a pass of delicate brilliance into the path of Nahuel Molina, and scored its second, converting a penalty after Marcos Acuña had been tripped by Denzel Dumfries.As Messi stood in front of Argentina’s fans, his arms outstretched in front of him, as if waiting for their gratitude for the gift he had bestowed upon them, many in the crowd would have allowed their thoughts to wander to next week, to the meeting with Croatia, or even a little further still, to what they have come to refer to as “la tercera,” the country’s third World Cup.Argentina’s players celebrated in the direction of the Dutch after they won in a penalty shootout.Peter Cziborra/ReutersThe prospect felt, in that moment, less of a fever dream than ever. Argentina’s campaign in Qatar started with one of the most searing humiliations in the country’s sporting history: beaten, here at Lusail, by a Saudi Arabia team that had barely been granted a second thought in the weeks leading to the tournament.That loss, with its echoes of Argentina’s defeat to Cameroon in 1990, shredded the team’s delicate confidence. The nation indulged in a bout of soul-searching and teeth-gnashing. The players held tense, emotionally charged meetings. Lionel Scaloni, the coach, took a team that had not lost a game for almost three years and ripped it up to start again from scratch. These are not, as a rule, reliable indicators of forthcoming success.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Brazil’s World Cup Hopes Fell Apart in 15 Minutes

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      AL RAYYAN, Qatar — They couldn’t believe it.On the sideline at Education City Stadium, forward Richarlison stared ahead. Pedro, another forward, hunched over with his hands on his knees. And the superstar Neymar, the man responsible for Brazil’s go-ahead goal, started crying, then sat at midfield and cried some more.Stunned and heartbroken, Brazil’s players struggled to process what had just transpired on the field and how they had blown a 1-0 lead against Croatia with 15 minutes left in extra time. Without a shot on goal to that point, Croatia pried the game from the jaws of defeat, tied the score in the 117th minute and then beat a leading World Cup favorite, 4-2, in a penalty shootout in the quarterfinals on Friday.After going 105 minutes without scoring, Brazil’s talented attack finally broke through a tough Croatian defense. Suddenly, it felt like all the pressure on Brazil had been lifted, its joy had returned and it just needed to play keep-away for the second period of extra time. But, then, it all unraveled so quickly and Croatia, the wily 2018 World Cup finalist that has excelled at winning penalty shootouts in the knockout stage, was victorious once again.“It’s hard to find the words to describe this moment,” Neymar said, pausing at times to compose himself as he spoke to reporters two hours after the final whistle.As Richarlison walked toward the team bus and stopped to talk to reporters, his eyes were still bright red from the earlier tears. “It hurts,” he said.Croatian players celebrated after Marquinhos missed Brazil’s last penalty kick.Petr David Josek/Associated PressRicharlison was one of many players on Brazil’s side who broke down in tears after the loss.Matthew Childs/ReutersBrazil may come to regret several moments of its loss to Croatia. How did Brazil fail to convert more of its 19 shots — 11 of them on goal — with all of its speed and dazzle? How could it not defend for the final 15-plus minutes of the game? And how could Brazil let two substitutes on a counterattack following a turnover — Mislav Orsic sprinting with the ball down the left side and then centering to Bruno Petkovic, who fired the shot — catch it off guard?A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More

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      Stadiums as High Art in a World Cup Fantasyland

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      From a desert tent to a golden bowl, the spectacular arenas Qatar has built in and around Doha showcase the majesty, and the folly, of this World Cup.AL KHOR, Qatar — It’s hard to convey how strange it is to come upon Al Bayt Stadium, an enormous stylized tent decorated with black stripes, for the first time. Designed for the World Cup as a homage to traditional nomadic dwellings, Al Bayt, the centerpiece of a manicured park 22 miles north of Doha, rises as if from nowhere and seems at once apt and incongruous, spectacular and otherworldly — an oasis in the desert, or maybe just a mirage.Completed just last year, Al Bayt is one of seven new stadiums built for the World Cup in and around Doha, the capital of Qatar. (An eighth is a spruced-up version of an old stadium.) Each is more spectacular, more unexpected than the next. Each contributes to the relentless sense of cognitive dissonance that pervades this World Cup.Qatar spent a reported $220 billion preparing for the tournament, conjuring new buildings, new neighborhoods and even an entirely new city. To be here now is to exist in a bubble of high unreality: a place in which everything is newer and better, and which exists, for the time being, only in reference to itself.On match days, it takes nearly an hour by bus to get to Al Bayt. All of the other stadiums are easily reachable on the underground metro system, or connected to it by free buses, so this has become a commuters’ World Cup, an event more reminiscent of an Olympics than previous tournaments. In Russia in 2018, for instance, some fans had to travel to Yekaterinburg, nearly 1,000 miles from Moscow, for a handful of matches. In Brazil four years earlier, the trip from Manaus to Pôrto Alegre was more than twice as far.But here you can visit all the stadiums in a single day.Education City Stadium in Al Rayyan.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesStadium 974 in Doha.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesTake the train west on the green line, for example, past the Qatar National Library (architect: Rem Koolhaas), and you find yourself in Education City, a 2,900-acre campus comprising schools, research centers and incubators. Walk a little way along the path and there is the 40,000-seat Education City Stadium, looming like a spaceship from a superior civilization whose inhabitants have a taste for bling. During the day, it changes color as the sun moves across the sky; at night, disco-style lights streak across it, fueled by thousands of diodes.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More