The pub at the downtown Red Lion here fills with World Cup revelers on Saturday afternoon. They’re downing beers and cocktails. Smoking cigs. Munching on nachos made from Doritos—not bad, for what it’s worth—and burgers and onion rings. Gazing at flat-screen televisions, where Australia is tangling with Tunisia. It’s a slice of normalcy, in a place unlike any the World Cup has ever been held.
Eventually, the imbibing will end, and the revelers will head back to wherever they’re staying. And here, at the first World Cup held in an Arab country, where the host’s land mass is slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut, the where of the staying is where things get weird.
The very well-to-do fans with money to burn can light it on fire at any number of gleaming, towering luxury hotels. Others can sleep in the thousands of rooms that loom a little lower all over town. But at the most compact World Cup ever, held in one of the richest countries in the world, there aren’t enough available bookings for the 1.2 million visitors expected to descend.
