Workers at Qatar’s World Cup stadiums toil in debt and squalor

When the England team arrive at Al Bayt stadium for their match against the USA in just over two months, they will be met by a stunning 60,000-seat arena built to resemble a nomadic tent.

The stadium, arguably Qatar’s finest, will host matches from the opening game through to the semi-finals. If England win their group and reach that far, they will play four games at the ground.

Just as impressive is the pristine park surrounding the stadium. Manicured lawns are dotted with fountains, streams and a lake. Ducks play in the cool water. A running track winds its way around the stadium passing a number of immaculate training pitches with grass like a putting green.

Yetthe men who labour day after day in the relentless heat and humidity to maintain this remarkable green space – watering the grounds, cutting the grass and painstakingly pulling up weeds by hand – live in very different conditions.

At the end of each shift, they are driven for 40 minutes to the edge of the desert, where they are dropped off at a farm belonging to their employer, Al Sulaiteen Agricultural and Industrial Complex (SAIC). Inside, among rows of giant greenhouses, they return to their rooms in small rundown cabins.

Some house three or four workers in single beds, others five or six in bunks, but all those viewed by the Guardian were windowless, cramped and dirty. Towels draped between the upper and lower bunks provide what little privacy there is. Water bottles, cooking utensils and personal belongings are crammed under the beds. Clothes hang on lines strung across the walls. The camp is as squalid as any this journalist has seen in nine years of reporting from Qatar.

Fifa and the local World Cup organising committee have repeatedly claimed that the