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IT’S Friday evening in the western suburbs of Doha in Qatar and the car park outside the giant Villaggio shopping mall is jammed with 4 x 4s trying to find a space.

A kid is showing off by letting a python writhe around on his shoulders outside the mall entrance which is a giant mock-up of the San Siro in Milan, all red-painted steel and criss-cross girders. Inside, the adidas shop has prime position. It’s packed.

At the five-star Torch hotel, a couple of hundred yards away, Schalke 04 players are playing cards in the lobby. The hotel is dry. No alcohol on sale anywhere. Raul is sipping at a coffee.

More and more teams are coming here for their winter break, taking advantage of the weather and the jaw-dropping facilities at the Aspire Zone grouped around the Khalifa Stadium, where England played Brazil in 2009.

And the region is becoming a hub for major sporting events. Across town at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were competing in an ATP event that was won by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

The England cricket team is in nearby Dubai, warming up for the Test series against Pakistan that will take place there and in Abu Dhabi in the next few weeks.

This week Qatar is hosting the Al Kass International Cup, a ­tournament contested by the youth teams of clubs like ­Barcelona, PSG, Juventus, Ajax and Vasco Da Gama. On the television in the hotel rooms, there are 57 channels and sport on almost every one.

Mainly local football, from Qatar and the neighbouring United Arab Emirates. Mainly playing to sparsely populated stadiums.

From the revolving restaurant on the 47th floor of the Torch, there’s another view: a sprawling city colonising the pale, beautiful wilderness of the desert as the world’s fastest growing economy puts its foot on the accelerator.

It seemed like a bad joke when FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar a little over a year ago. The decision seemed to symbolise everything that was wrong with the governing body and its ­susceptibility to corruption.

The basic concern about the ability of this fabulously wealthy nation to stage the tournament has not gone away because the brutally hot summers are not about to get any cooler.

In Doha last weekend, I listened to Hassan Al-Thawadi, the ­charismatic chief executive of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, talk about the problem.

Al-Thawadi (pictured inset with 2022 ambassador Zinedine Zidane) talked about air-conditioning in the stadiums, the new technology that may be available in 10 years’ time, how the walkways from the new metro system to the stadiums will be cooled and refreshed by sprinklers to ease the discomfort of fans.

He said maybe all the stadiums would have roofs so the ­temperature could be even better controlled. And he talked about a pilot scheme at a coffee shop in Doha that was trialling an outdoor cooling system.

This was a scheme that would allow people to sit outside in 40 degree heat by blasting cool air at them and erecting barriers to thwart the broiling wind.

Almost everything else about Qatar’s plans for 2022 is ­impressive. Their wealth takes care of that. Only one of the proposed stadiums is built but the plans for the others are spectacular.

With the availability of cheap, foreign labour from the Indian sub-continent and Qatar’s riches, there is little doubt the building will be completed well ahead of time. They have also tried to turn the dismay at awarding the ­tournament to a nation with one- fifth of the population of London into a positive by pointing out that small is beautiful.

The Compact World Cup Al-Thawadi called it, and for those contemplating the travel ­nightmare that will be Poland and Ukraine at Euro 2012 this summer, that may strike a chord.

Every stadium will be within an hour’s reach, Al-Thawadi said. Fans at the ­tournament could even watch three live games in a day if they wanted to.

Alcohol would be available at selected locations, as it is now in some Western-owned hotels, if fans wanted it but the Qatari vision is for 2022 to be a family-­orientated World Cup.

Not many families visit the desert in summer, though, and although the weather last weekend was beautiful and balmy, the reality of a summer spectator experience would be several weeks of moving from one air-conditioned sanctuary to another. From malls like Villaggio to what Al-Thawadi calls ‘hospitality centres’ to stunning galleries like the Islamic Art Museum to hotel bars to metro trains and specially cooled stadiums.

There are, though, real concerns about the safety of the players if they are forced to play in extreme temperatures. The ­consequences hardly bare thinking about.

Maybe that’s why when I asked Al-Thawadi whether the 2022 World Cup would definitely be played in June and July, he was deliberately vague.

“If the football community says they want to host it in the winter, we will be more than happy,” he said. “But our bid was based on a summer World Cup and we are prepared for that. We leave it in the hands of football’s ­stakeholders.”

That would change things dramatically. Purely in terms of its staging, a winter World Cup in Qatar could be a great success.

But then there would be a new problem. How would the Premier League and the most powerful European clubs react?

It is not too much of a stretch to envisage a winter World Cup provoking such fierce opposition from the leading sides it could be the death knell for international football.

Qatar is a fascinating place. Its plans for the World Cup are backed by untold wealth and driven by able men with great vision.

And yes, there is an attraction about the idea of the Arab world staging its first World Cup.

But one fact remains: when FIFA gave Qatar the 2022 tournament, it bequeathed to football one hell of a problem.