Off to Qatar!

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Brian is going to the World Cup!

Hey there, it’s been a while since the last post – part of the changes in life that COVID brought.


What better time to come back than to blog my trip to Qatar for the 2022 Men’s World Cup!  I have been fortunate enough to say this will be my 4th World Cup.  The first 3 being:

What I loved about my previous trips is being around and meeting so many people from all over the world, coming together to have a good time and celebrate the world’s most popular sport at the highest level.  It was for this reason that I started saving up to go to Qatar 3 years ago.  

I will be meeting up with a couple friends in Manila, Philippines for a few days, before heading to Doha for 10 days.  This year’s event is unique in that all of the stadiums are within a 35 mile radius of Doha, and it’s just a 2 ½ hours drive from the northern-most to southern-most stadium, if you stopped at every station along the way!

With that being the case, I will be attending 10 games in that 10 day span:

Nov 21 – USA vs Wales

Nov 22 – Denmark vs Tunisia

Nov 23 – Japan vs Germany | Belgium vs Canada 

Nov 24 – Uruguay vs South Korea | Brazil vs Serbia

Nov 25 – England vs USA

Nov 26 – Day off

Nov 27 – Croatia vs Canada

Nov 28 – South Korea vs Ghana

Nov 29 – USA vs Iran


I will plan to write 2-3 blogs posts detailing my experiences, so stay tuned for those.

In them I would like to look at things from a sport psychology perspective.  One of the most important concepts is “Focus on the Controllables.”  For this World Cup, the
“out -of-controllables” list will be especially important:

  • This is the first “winter” world cup (it usually takes place in the summer)
  • The temperatures will be in the 90s for most games
  • The majority of pro leagues are in the middle of their season. Typically with a World Cup, the pro leagues are in their off-season
  • The above points have lead to some key injuries, and most likely will lead to some during the tournament
  • There is a lot of outside noise surrounding corruption and human rights abuses in the host country of Qatar
  • As always for World Cups, the teams do not have a very long time to practice together and to gel as a unit. Players are coming from different teams, different leagues, and to be on the same page in soccer is crucial

I will be thinking about these issues as the tournament kicks off, and will make sure to include my observations as the tournament kicks off.

More to explorer

The Mental Game? It’s Simple!

As a high school athlete, I was a pretty good soccer player. My confidence went through it’s ups and downs during those

Back from Qatar – by the numbers

Here’s a numerical representation of my time in Qatar at the 2022 World Cup: 3,000,000  Population of Qatar 315,000  Qatari citizens (that’s