DOHA, QATAR
Around 200 football fans belonging to different nationalities belonging to the Portugal Fans Qatar group met at one of Qatar’s landmarks, Katara and enjoyed a fun-filled Friday evening at the Katara beach.
Besides taking group pictures at the steps of the Katara Amphitheatre for social media promotions, the fans also got a chance to take a Dhow ride from Katara Beach.
With Qatar gearing up to host the FIFA showpiece event in another 120 days’ fans of different countries, which have qualified for the World Cup and based in the host country are busy organizing events to increase their fan base.
Group leader of Portugal Fans Qatar were happy with the response. Qatar fan leader for Portugal Elisabeth Reis, said that different nationalities took part. “We had people from Mali, Sudan, Portugal community based Qatar, Portugal nationals from Goa, people from India and Sri Lankan fans. It was a fun-filled evening and a family event.”
For the record, Reis is the one who is coordinating with a lot of organizations, communities and fans groups and bringing them to one platform. Explaining the choice of Katara as a location for the fans' meet Reis said that it was with a purpose to make fans based outside Qatar know more about the host country and the things it has to offer to the football fans when they are in Qatar for the World Cup in November-December.
“We want to show how beautiful Qatar is and how important Katara is. It is a Qatar landmark and a must visit place for every visitor who is coming to Qatar and it is a unique place,” said Reis, who is based in Qatar for the last 16 years and having earlier worked in Macau and was born in Mozambique.
“We Portugal fans in Qatar are planning many programmes and events that will showcase our unity and passion towards the beautiful game and team Portugal. This event was a great opportunity for all fans to meet one another in person and make some new friends,” she added.
Mohamed Shahil, another group member hailing from Kerala was happy with the response. “We are delighted with the good response, the crowd turnout was beyond our expectations, it is summer here in Qatar and most of the people are on holidays to their home countries. So it was a fantastic gathering and people from different countries came together to support Portugal. We had native French speakers, Arabic speakers, Konkani, Malayalam, Sinhalese and Portuguese native language fans all under one banner. It was quite an experience meeting them and interacting with them.”
