DOHA: Qatar’s organising committee has identified and selected 40 suitable Team Base Camps for competing nations and match officials.
Many of the facilities have been used already during recent tournaments, including the FIFA Club World Cup and FIFA Arab Cup.
Each Team Base Camp consists of a hotel and training site, with every one close to all of Qatar’s eight tournament stadiums. Thanks to the country’s compact nature, teams will stay and train in one location throughout the event – meaning more time for rest and preparation, and minimal travel times on match days.
During the World Cup, 33 Base Camps will be used – 32 of them by participating teams and one by the match officials. Offering 40 Team Base Camps was part of Qatar’s bid in order to enable teams to pick a location which best suits their needs.
“Our training facilities are located across the country,” said Ali Al Dosari, Training Sites Project Manager at the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy. “The longest journey between a training site and hotel will take about 20 minutes by bus.”
Each training site has been developed to include floodlit, natural grass pitches – with the turf grown at the SC’s Tree & Turf Nursery in Qatar. Each site also includes stands for media training sessions, dressing rooms, medical facilities, recovery facilities, a media centre, and IT and communications networks.
“Half of the training sites are brand new, while the other half were existing sites that have been upgraded,” said Al Dosari. “With the new training sites, a team will have a team base camp training site of their own to train in. The training site pitches are the same as the pitches in our World Cup stadiums, in terms of the quality of turf and size.”
(Source: SC)
