Outdoor sculptures and a sports history museum provide cultural backdrop for Qatar World Cup

The Qatar World Cup is now just weeks away and more than a million visitors are expected to travel to the tournament.

To welcome the fans an exhibition all about football has opened in one of the world's largest sports museums. Meanwhile, on the streets of Doha, outdoor sculptures give an artistic backdrop to the sporting contest.

The 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum showcases a wide variety of sports memorabilia – from Muhammad Ali’s fight-worn boxing gloves to racing legend Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari. And with the FIFA World Cup in mind, it has opened a new exhibition: ‘World of Football’.

The exhibits are presented in two parts to represent a game played in two halves. It starts by examining the global appeal of the beautiful game, from the streets to the stadium.

"In the first half we’ve got the origins," says World of Football exhibition curator Andrew Pearce. "We’ve got the 'Who plays?', we’ve got the laws, we’ve also got some stories about some of the greatest players in the game as well, including some of their shirts, which is pretty exciting. We’ve got some great film and action from the World Cup. We’ve got a section on fans and how fans support their team. And also a bit on what is it that makes this game so popular the world over."

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The second half of the exhibition chronicles Qatar’s path to hosting the World Cup.

"The Road to Doha section really explains the making of the 2022 World Cup," says museum Head of Exhibitions Aalia Khalid Al Khater. "But it starts from 1930, which is the first World Cup in Uruguay. So from there, we have the section that is dedicated to showcasing at least two objects from every World Cup from 1930 to 2018 and then obviously each poster from