Soccer

DOHA, Qatar — After Sheng Xie, a 33-year-old soccer fan from Vancouver, booked his flight to the World Cup, he went searching for accommodations.Using the official tournament website, he quickly settled on a relatively affordable place called Fan Village. The room pictured looked functional and clean. There were two twin beds, Wi-Fi, air conditioning and a refrigerator, all for about $200 a night.He did not realize it was, essentially, inside a shipping container.“What did I book?” Xie asked himself in recent weeks, as he began to see photos on social media of his accommodations under construction.What he found when he arrived was a sea of colorful metal boxes, lined side by side in neat rows, lettered and numbered, stretching about as far as he could see. His container/trailer was one of thousands hastily set up in a dirt field near the airport. Workers said there were 4,000 of them. A map at the entrance showed plans for more than 7,500, plus a section set aside for employees. It was like a one-story Lego town.Renan Almeida, top left, and Gihana Fava arrived at the World Cup from Brazil.Their room came with a layer of dust but, to their relief, hot water in the shower.And down the well-lit acres of artificial turf laid atop the pebbly soil, past the giant tent that serves as a dining hall and the big box that houses a grocery store, and all the little boxes that sell food or coffee or pharmaceuticals or fan gear, and not far from the outdoor gym and the soccer-field sized spaces where people can gather to watch soccer matches on a big screen, Xie found his room, in section E8, behind a metal door.A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More