Workers’ Cup 2014 speeds to the finals (JMD quoted in Doha News)

Posted: 20 Apr 2014 02:25 AM PDT
Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Workers' Cup 2014Al Sadd v Sailiya 144
All photos courtesy of Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy
With reporting from Ankita Menon
It was a rough weekend for several teams competing in the second annual Workers’ Cup, as the playing field was narrowed from eight to four teams.
Gulf Contracting Co. and Out Look will face off in the semi-finals on Friday, as will Amana and Tanzifco Co WLL. The matches will most likely take place at the Al Wakra Sports Club, and are free and open to the public.
So far, thousands of people have turned out to support the teams, which are comprised of workers from several companies around Qatar. The finals, which will be held on Friday, May 2, may be played at a stadium, organizers told Doha News.
A spokesman for the QSports League, which is overseeing the tournament, said the motivation for holding such an event is to help the nation (host of the 2022 World Cup) become a “sports hub.”
“We are building the momentum for Fifa 2022 by engaging the working communities in sports activities,” he said.

Recreation

According to a different QSL organizer who spoke to Doha News during the inaugural season last year, the goal is also to integrate a large segment of Qatar’s population with the rest of the community.
The tournament also addresses a common complaint among Qatar’s hundreds of thousands of working class residents about a lack of recreational options here. These men, who are usually here without their families, are often turned away from malls and other public areas on Fridays, their one day off a week.
Holding sports tournaments for this demographic are a relatively novel concept, According to James Dorsey, who writes for MidEast Soccer. Last year, he said the idea of such a tournament could be seen as a “small but not insignificant” step forward in terms of improving human rights for this vulnerable group.
Thoughts?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Intellectual honesty in Israel & Palestine produces radically different outcomes

Image
  Just published! By James M. Dorsey To watch a video version of this story or listen to an audio podcast click here . Thank you for your support and loyalty. Intellectual honesty is a rare commodity in the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. It is even rarer with the rise of Jewish ultra-nationalism and a generation of Israelis and Palestinians nurtured on prejudiced, biased, and often supremacist perceptions of the other. The irony is that historically, it was far-right militants, and currently, it is fringe left-wing intellectuals who displayed intellectual honesty, even if their conclusions differ radically. With few exceptions, intellectual honesty has long been lost on the Israeli right and left. What intellectual honesty survives is posited in fringe pockets of the left that propagate a paradigm cultural change on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide that goes against the grain of mainstream Israeli and Palestinian thinking and, in today’s fog of war,...
Read more

Pakistan caught in the middle as China’s OBOR becomes Saudi-Iranian-Indian battleground

Image
By James M. Dorsey Pakistani General Raheel Sharif walked into a hornet’s nest when he stepped off a private jet in Riyadh two weeks ago to take command of a Saudi-led, 41-nation military alliance. Things have gone from bad to worse since. General Shareef had barely landed when Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dashed the Pakistani’s hopes to include Iran in the alliance that nominally was created to fight terrorism rather than confront Iran. The general’s hopes were designed to balance Pakistan’s close alliance with Saudia Arabia with the fact that it shares a volatile border with Iran and is home to the world’s second largest Shiite Muslim community. General Sharif’s ambition had already been rendered Mission Impossible before he landed with Saudi Arabia charging that Iran constitutes the world’s foremost terrorist threat . In a recent interview with the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting television network, Prince Mohammed, who also serves a...
Read more

Israeli & Palestinian war crimes? Yes. Genocide? Maybe. A talk with Omer Bartov

Image
  To watch a video version of this story on YouTube please click  here. An audio podcast is available on Soundcloud. Hi, and welcome to the Turbulent World with me James M. Dorsey, as your host. Words matter. No more so than in legal settings. Genocide is the word most associated with Israel's more than one-month-long assault on Gaza. In response to the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel, in which at least 1,200, mostly civilian, Israelis were killed. Genocide and Holocaust scholars, including those who believe that Israel has and is committing war crimes in its assault are divided about whether Israeli actions amount to genocide. Even so, they warn that Israeli actions could lead to genocide, if it not already has. What is certain is that optics streaming out of Gaza of the destruction and the plight of innocent Palestinian civilians, including large numbers of children and babies, explain the popular use of the term genocide when discussing the Israeli assa...
Read more