Shortly after the silence enveloping this sleepy neighborhood on the outskirts of Doha was broken by the late evening call to prayer echoing from the minarets, the United States men’s national team arrived at the Al-Gharrafa Stadium on Saturday night for their penultimate training session ahead of a tournament unlike any other.
The modest 21,000-seat bowl in Al Rayyan – the Americans’ training headquarters for the length of their stay in Qatar – is eight miles from the soaring glass-and-steel skyscrapers and sprawling air-conditioned malls of the Doha corniche. But not nearly far enough, it turns out, to escape the swirling controversies about the first World Cup to be staged in an Arab country, which were only amplified to a deafening pitch in the run-up to Sunday’s opening match between the host country and Ecuador.
