Less than a year remains until the start of the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar.
Sheikh Hamad the Emir, envisions it. He strongly believes that despite Qatar being a small country, it must have a powerful influence worldwide using a professional media system comprised of leading workers in the field assembled using Qatar’s great economic wealth. The country earned the World Cup through careful planning step by step and doing everything through the proper system.
The Emir Tamim who calculates every move in a pragmatic way in complex reality in the face of many enemies, foreign and domestic is making it happen smoothly.
Obstacles were numerous and Qatar was facing international scrutiny. The country has little to no infrastructure in terms of stadiums, housing for the athletes, means of transportation on a large enough scale. Not to mention tensions with neighbouring states. But Qatar moved along with challenges, setting and achieving ambitious goals.
To resolve all of its conflicts with its neighbours and to peacefully and successfully host the World Cup, the country needed a charismatic middleman and peacemaker in disputes. This whole complicated ordeal was placed under the responsibility of an engineer turned diplomat, who held the title of Deputy Director of the Emir’s Bureau of Qatar, since 2020. Saud bin ‘Abd-al Rahman al-Thani, 51 years old, married with children, rose to become the country top mediator for two years now.
He is praised as a steadying force at the bargaining table, credited with defusing volatile situations with his forward-looking vision.
Saud is the one who brought forth the idea to host the world cup in the latter part of November in the small gulf country, where temperatures in the summer soar to more than 50 degrees Celsius.
Raised in Qatar, Saud al-Thani studied engineering in the United States and graduated in 1993. He was later appointed as the communications chief of the Qatari army. In 2003 he traveled to Lyon, France, in order to complete his master’s degree in sports management and in 2015 he was appointed Chairman if the Qatari Olympic committee. He was then appointed to represent his country as the Qatari Ambassador in Germany, following in the footsteps of his father before him, who was the Qatari ambassador in the United States.
Saud struck the sponsorship deal given by Qatari Airways to the German football club Bayern Munich during his tenure as the Qatari Ambassador to Germany. According to the deal, the Qatari airline will pay Bayern Munich a total sum of 20 million euros a year for 5 years.
After three years serving as the Qatari Ambassador in Germany, he was appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic. In 2019 he was appointed to role of Deputy Director of the Emir’s Bureau of Qatar and in October of 2020 he was appointed as the Director of the Bureau, making him into the most powerful man in Qatar after the Emir.
Thanks to his diplomatic talents, his academic background, his close relationship with the Qatari ruler, and his knowledge in Europe, Saud was one of the very few who worked diligently around the clock to further the plans for Qatar to host the world cup and there are those who say claim the he was, in fact, the living, working spirit behind the scenes and that he is a man that is well versed in the secrets of the deals that were forged at the time that led to Qatar earning the chance to host the 2022 World Cup.
Some would say that Saud is the architect behind the reconciliation projects with neighbouring gulf countries and that it was him that led the early talks and the complicated-negotiations with Saudi Arabian Officials to set up the visit of Qatar’s ruler to the Saudi city of Al-‘Aula in 2021 as the personal guest of the crown prince Muhammad Bin Salman.
Saud was in contact with him at that time. They met multiple times during the negotiations, including meetings with the Crown Prince himself, until agreements were made, the issues between the gulf countries were resolved, and the ‘siege’ of Qatar was lifted.
In the meantime, Saud visited not only Saudi Arabia, but also the UAE where he met with Sheikh Tahnon Bin Ziyad and was a guest in Doha. Here too, as in Saudi Arabia, Saud was key to resolving the disputes between Qatar and the UAE.
Many observers have noted that Saud has managed all of the preparations with the 2022 world cup professionally and without incident so far, and if there were any allegations of corruption or human rights violations or anything similar that showed up in Western media, they have been dissipated thanks to the professionalism, knowledge, and leadership of Saud al-Thani.
Since Saud Thani helped resolving some of the nation’s thorniest issues, the Qatari government honours his approaches and techniques to manoeuvre through challenging and entrenched disputes and negociations as well. Sheikh Gasem, the Qatari ruler’s brother, trusts him to handle all of the preparations of the world cup without incident and a very senior source in the Bureau said that the ruler of Qatar does not move a finger without first consulting the Director of his Bureau.
Saud aims to reflect and implement the Emir vision by making Qatar an international power in the field of sports, not only by hosting the World Cup but also in establishing and introducing many new sports to the Gulf state, as rugby, cricket, and baseball.
