Sunday, November 15, 2009

Doha: England - Brazil

Whew, it has been quite a first weekend in Doha.

Yesterday was the century ride (blog entry).

Tonight, I attended the sold-out England - Brazil soccer match in the 50,000 seat Khalifa International Stadium, ticketing courtesy of my friend Majd Sakr.

It's a gorgeous looking stadium:

Here is the view from the 500 Rials ($140) seats we got:

Yup, a little too far away to see the faces of the players despite my recent iLasik surgery.

For the second half, we ended up in some minor-VIP seating area. Free juice and a big difference in terms of viewing:

The game? It was 1-0 to Brazil and we unluckily missed the only goal just after half-time due to going for free juice. It was a friendly and both teams had already qualified for the World Cup in South Africa, so neither team had very much at stake. Still, it was fairly obvious Brazil was the better team. They scored a goal, hit the post and missed a penalty. England barely had a look in at goal.

The stadium is part of the Doha Sports City Complex built for the 2006 Asian Games.

Next to the stadium is the 300m tall Aspire Tower shown here. (About the same height as the Tour Eiffel in Paris.)

Also, next to it is a large shopping mall (Villagio) - not shown here.

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