Every corporation and sports team in the world seems today to be queuing up to do business with Qatar. The oil-and-gas-rich Gulf Arab nation is on a spending spree, snapping up assets all over the world, and you would have had to have spent the last twelve months on Mars not to have noticed. Ahmad Al Sayed is the man whose nod is everything for would-be partners.

2011 was not a restful year for him. Qatar is today linked, in the media at least, with every blue-chip on the planet, and with the small matter of the 2022 World Cup to organise, was thought to be on the brink of swooping for Manchester Utd. The coming decade will be one in which Qatar emerges fully onto the global consciousness, and Al Sayed’s role in that will be immense.