QATAR FLOORS THE WORLD IN STUNNING WELCOME

Ecuador's Valencia Denied First-Half Hat-trick By VAR In Cup Opener

- Siddharth.Saxena @timesgroup.com

Al-Bayt Stadium (Al Khor): Sometimes, to exhale, you blow steam. Qatar was breathing fire. Throwing up happy, friendly flames as it finally was able to show the world all that it had been dreaming, designing and quietly working amidst all these years of doubt from the western world. It was as if they were shaking off all the derision, like you'd flick off the desert sand that blows in these parts and settles on your being, then continue to move forward. It was that kind of feeling. You could not escape it.

Qatar needed to finally exhale. It had been quiet for too long. It was evident in the rousing way they sang their national anthem, paradoxically by a native people who are in minority in their land, compared to the nearly 80% of the foreign workforce that helps hold up their country, once a backward pearling centre till they discovered natural gas and all that it could do. On Sunday, in the evening desert chill, at the gleaming, packed AlBayt stadium in the Al Khor town which literally means creek, by singing higher than the others, they were only reaffirming to the world that this belongs to them, that they had created it. And that the world is welcome.