Floodlights are on but women’s game in Qatar is kept in the dark

Returning to make a show in Qatar this week was a bizarre experience – everything and nothing changing in the three years since I had lived there. It’s thrown up so many different, and huge, things we need to talk about before the World Cup. But let’s start somewhere I didn’t expect – with the women I met there.

The first football I saw on my night-flight, half-awake arrival was being played by girls. A friend twice removed had told me about a seven-a-side tournament for women taking place during the desert’s cooler months (September to March). The first two games happened to be slated for the day I landed. Could I go? She was happy to take me and try to negotiate our way in, but my co-producer Finn would have to stay in the hotel. Men were forbidden.

We parked up outside the university ground in the so-called Education City and could immediately hear cheering. The pitch was invisible from the car park, and as we walked up it became clear why. Every inch of the surrounding netting had been covered with heavy gauze to prevent men looking in. Two female guards sat on the door, looked us up and down, and opened the gate.

Inside there were around 70 women sitting, watching and waiting to play, making the noise of a crowd ten times as strong. The pitch was well-kept and beautifully flood-lit; the standard very Sunday league.

The women’s national team were launched to great fanfare as part of Qatar’s World Cup bid in 2010 but they have not played a single competitive fixture since 2014. I believe I’m the only member of foreign media to have seen Qatar’s female footballers play this year.

One talented Qatari woman I spoke to said she did not even play with the national team because the standard was so low. There is no regular