World Cup: Qatar is an astonishing, perplexing place that leaves you asking – why?

“How are your training facilities?” I asked Louis van Gaal, the Holland coach.

“They are top,” he replied. “They cannot be better. Pitch fantastic.” And then, a few sentences later, he proceeded to double-down on a previous assertion that the World Cup should not actually be here in Qatar and should never have been coming here at all. Which kind of sums it up. It looks amazing, but how do you feel?

Holland are training here at a facility called Qatar University Training Site 6. The grass is pristine, there are floodlights, two pitches, every piece of equipment they requested is here and all enclosed inside a freshly planted perimeter of greenery to keep it private. You see, it is not just a Metro system