Four friends hitchhiked to Qatar to support the Portuguese national team. The trip began on October 6 from a gas station at the Second Ring Road.

Four Portuguese wanted to challenge themselves and hitchhiked to Qatar for 50 days, overcoming several “storms” to reach a “good port” and support the national team at the World Cup.

While the team was “tuning the car” for their 2022 World Cup debut at the Al Shahaniya training center, Daniel, Bruno and Duarte fought back furiously outside the enclosure, waiting to see the Portuguese players and finally reach their goal. who covered 8,000 kilometers and crossed 15 countries in the car of complete strangers.

Later, Francisco arrived on the scene because he went to “take care of the publication” wishing good luck to Cristiano Ronaldo, who wanted to go viral.

“It was quite a long way because we chose the hardest way to get here, which is with thumbs up. [sinal de pedido de boleia] on the roads, waiting for people to give us a lift to Qatar,” Duarte Delgado told Lusa.

The journey began on October 6th from a gas station on the Second Ring Road in Lisbon, it passed through Guarda and was supposed to take them to Salamanca, but only once it headed for Toulouse, and soon with an omen that they would get there. Arrival in Qatar: “The guy who drove us to Toulouse is called Cristiano, so it’s a blessed name.”

They have visited Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Turkey, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, giving wings to a plan devised by Daniel and Francisco, who love “outlandish ideas”.

“This idea came between me and Francisco, we have a YouTube channel. It is an idea to join the hitchhiking world championship which is still not very common in Portugal. We decided to hitchhike to Qatar to wish Ronaldo good luck. I wanted to personally support the national team and do it with the greatest adventure and the most economical way (…), but it turns out not because there are 50 days left,” explained Daniel Estima, a straight man from the parish of Macinata do Vouga in Aveiro.

Without a plan and on the basis of “improvisation” the trip was made, each armed with his backpack and with an important item in the luggage when asking for a ride on the road: a sign with the destination inscribed: “Qatar”.

“It was always in my backpack because we only used it for the first two days. Now all that’s left is Cristiano Ronaldo to sign this poster. There are four of us, and we can’t keep the poster alone. We’re not going to cut him in half, he won’t even visit everyone week after week. We would like to donate this symbolic poster to a public organization [organização não-governamental] who works with refugees. This is what marked us the most, and we believe that someone will appreciate this poster, ”said Duarte Delgado, a native of Lisbon.

The path has become “tortuous”, especially “on the border between Europe and Asia, namely in Bulgaria and Turkey,” Duarte explained, since it is “a region of economic migrants, as well as refugees from Afghanistan and Syria.” .

“There are not many people in this area who ask for a ride, especially with large backpacks, like ours. We were passing Syrian refugees and the locals didn’t want to help us, they didn’t give us a lift. who helps refugees can get up to six years in prison. From the moment we showed our passport to the police everything was fine,” Duarte said.

Without an elevator to leave the area, the four friends were “sleeping in a tent owned by some locals in the middle of the bush” when “at dusk” at the end of the day, they felt something that was probably frightened. life.

“Three armed civilians with dogs appear out of nowhere, asking us to leave the tent, trying to figure out who we are. They thought we were refugees,” Duarte continued, revealing that the Portuguese passport was what they had earned: “Fortunately, since we have a Portuguese passport, everything ended well, but we could only guess what would have been if we didn’t have our passport.”

With only a guaranteed ticket for Portugal’s first meeting with Ghana this Thursday, the friends are still hoping to “catch someone in the stadium” for a second meeting with Uruguay on Monday.

And when they finish the tour, Famalicense’s Bruno Carvalho is sure of one thing: “The return is by plane.”

Francisco Albuquerque will arrive at the center of Al Shahaniya just in time to see the national team bus pass by as they exit the training center, after the publication of what everyone hopes will go viral. Together with three friends, he even saw Cristiano Ronaldo waving at them from the car.