On the King's Road: Portugal, Ronaldo and the call that drives the crowd crazy in Qatar - voila! FIFA World Cup

A messenger's report and voila!

Sports for Qatar, after Portugal's victory over Uruguay (photo: Paz Hasdai, editing: Nir Chen)

World Cup audiences tend to be superficial.

He is looking for attractions, plays, historical moments, stardust.

And when Cristiano Ronaldo is on the pitch, it's all together.

Out of excitement, the spectators do not walk the way to the stadium: every few meters they jump, and land with their hands raised to the sides and shouting "Say".

When the ball reaches him, they all start, raise their heads, like excited puppies.

It seems that FIFA was also looking for this special moment, when it awarded him the first goal against Uruguay, perhaps as wishful thinking, but disappointingly, he missed the ball.

As always with Ronaldo, every inch is a world. One could imagine the people FIFA examines the repeated gears again and again, arguing, insisting, praying that the ball touched a strand of the king's hair to make the crowds happy, but there was no choice but to issue a correction and clarification to the subjects: sorry, the scorer is Bruno Fernandes.

The audience turned up their noses.

Oh well.

Even Ronaldo knows that he used to conquer it.

He did everything right, like before.

Released from the brake, like before.

Put himself in a position to score, stepped up at the right time, but the inches he missed tell the whole story.

If throughout his career he was on the right side of luck and every deflection flew to him for connections, now he misses the ball instead of sticking it like a big one.

Then the coach takes him out, and this is also accepted naturally, even with understanding.

After all, he is already an adult, not fit to play, there is a load.

But once he was not ready to change.

No coach would have dared to take out the world's most hungry footballer for fear of dealing with faces and dramas.

Ronaldo came out, immediately Portugal received a penalty, and thus he missed a brace.

There is no doubt that this is not his year, but the consolation is that he remains with us.

There will be another episode in the show.

He will miss, he will conquer, it doesn't matter.

it will be fun.

Cristiano Ronaldo and the controversial goal (photo: official website, from YouTube)

Metro This way

The sentence that is heard the most in Qatar and has become the official slogan of the tournament is "Metro this way".

It originates from amateur conduct, when volunteers in the metro and various traffic controllers insisted on using the megaphone recording method to save energy and not repeat the same sentence many times.

This is how a recording of the same direction instructions was played over and over again, in a deadly and dizzying loop: Metro this way, with a finger pointing in the desired direction.

This phrase became so dominant that over time different versions were added to it: volunteers sing this "slogan" in a special tune, others shout it while dancing, sometimes the audience joins in and improvises, and overall there is an atmosphere of amusement around the reading, which has already become a running joke in every A place where fans gather - an usher shouts "Metro", and everyone answers him "This way!"

- and giggling.

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The traffic in Doha crawls, the queues here are long everywhere, and the interaction with the traffic controllers is non-stop.

The megaphone instructions are a real environmental nuisance, noisy and jarring, and it is not clear how they became a joke.

It is doubtful whether the slogan "Metro this way" would have been received with such success at a film festival, for example, or at any other respectable cultural event.

But football fans are fluid people.

They are at the party, and ready to have everything.

Sometimes it comes out of desperation: a person is stuck in line, he has no way out, calls are heard from the megaphone in the background, and he has no choice but to cooperate.

In these moments of despair, the level of being of football fans turns out to be simplistic: all they want is to shout, laugh, be part of a collective, behave in groups.

Sometimes it's embarrassing and disturbing and leads to a problematic attitude, but sometimes it's nice and liberating.

We came to laugh, have fun and fool around.

"Many people have prejudices about Islam" (Photo: Paz Hasdai)

An act in a nice family

Before every game at the Lusail Stadium on the outskirts of Doha, they show up with a pot of coffee and a box of dates.

It was the third time I encountered this nice family, with two children, a son and a daughter aged 7 and 9, a kind father and a mother whose eyes only peek out from the hijab and look smiling and kind.

The father holds the coffee pot and small cups in his other hand, and offers each and every fan a taste of traditional Arabic black coffee.

The children hold the box of dates, and also offer a tasting to the general public.

Present.

To this they attach a small business card, on which is written "Islam" and "Peace and Love".

I did everything I had been warned all my life, and accepted the offer from the foreign heathen.

Their pleasant faces reassured me.

I sipped the coffee which was delicious, the dates are repulsive.

"Mmm", I said, "What is that barcode on the card?".

"Scan it and you will get a lot of information about our religion," he said, "Many people have prejudices about Islam. We are here to show our warmth, our welcome,

From the looks of it, it's obvious that they don't come from a particularly rich background, so the financial investment - especially a trip to the stadium, with the coffee pots and the boxes of dates - was worthy of appreciation.

Their intentions are good.

big hearted

we talked

I listened.

We smiled.

There was a cordial conversation, about football, hospitality and coffee with Hal.

At some point it was no longer possible to ignore the elephant on the neck - a "Free Palestine" scarf.

There was no choice left, I revealed that I was from Israel.

At that second the conversation stopped.

He said "we have nothing to talk about", walked away demonstratively and took the children in his hands.

So if you can't talk to this nice peace-seeking man, who can you?

• FIFA World Cup

• opinions and interpretations

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• Portugal national team

• Cristiano Ronaldo