So, Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. Despite never playing in the tournament before.
Let’s be honest, how many players of the Qatar team can you name?
And what about these pesky rumors about Qatar?
Such as: they bought everything, including players!
Or: they naturalize everything that moves!
Is that so?
I want to find out what they are really about…
How they became what they are…
And who they actually are.
Well, they’re not precisely nobodies:
Reigning Asian champions and ranked 49th in the world.
That’s higher up than Saudi Arabia and Ghana, who will also be at the World Cup.
The country has 2.8 million inhabitants…
but only about 11 per cent of them are citizens.
That's just 300,000 people.
Roughly the population of Leicester in the UK.
How can you put together an Asian champion from such a small pool?
A pool that gets even smaller when you think about it:
Because only about half of this 300,000 are actually men of course.
I hear you say: Well, Leicester won the Premier League so why can’t Qatar win the Asian Cup?
True, but did Leicester win it with players from Leicester only?
And This is where I want to take a closer look.
Of course, the majestic Aspire Academy in Qatar’s capital Doha plays a big role here.
But let’s start by looking at where it all began…
Qatar played their first official match in 1970, against neighbors Bahrain – and lost.
Three years later legendary Brazilian Pelé came for a friendly.
Though that didn’t prevent Qatar from dropping out of their first World Cup qualifiers in 1977.
But only four years later, they surprised the football world.
At the 1981 Youth World Championship in Australia, Qatar made it to the final!
Their coach: Evaristo de Macedo from Brazil, a Barça star from the late 50s and early 60s.
He would mastermind upset victories against both England and Brazil.
In the final Qatar were then thrashed by West Germany. In heavy Sydney rain.
Evaristo de Macedo still remembers that day vividly:
Qatar gets just 80 millimeters of rainfall each year. As little as almost nowhere else in the world.
Playing under the rain is best trained outside of Qatar.
Besides me being a great meteorological guru.
Bringing in foreign expertise became a pattern in Qatari football.
The Gulf country trusted coaches from abroad – with big expectations. But they weren’t too patient with them.
Between 1969 and 2022 Qatar had 43 different national coaches.
Only three of them were Qataris.
The rest were from Egypt, France, Uruguay, Brazil, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and counting.
Compare that to other nations:
Germany had 9 coaches in that same period, all of them German.
France had 12, all French but one.
England had 19, all English but two.
And Brazil 24. Sounds a lot but nothing in comparison to Qatar.
Under a bunch of Brazilian coaches, including De Macedo, Qatar did actually progress.
They hit a peak in 1993 when they were ranked 53rd in the world.
But World Cup finals?
Never.
The turn of the millennium marked a new era for Qatar’s overall approach to sport.
With one big culmination point: hosting the 2022 World Cup.
Qatar’s strategy when it comes to sport is analyzed on our channel in different stories.
In this video, I’ll stick to how this translates to the Qatar national football team on the pitch.
In the early 2000s Qatar wanted to strengthen the men’s football team.
Even before the World Cup was awarded in 2010. And made headlines with unorthodox naturalization plans.
This is a guy called Aílton. A German Bundesliga star at the turn of the millennium.
This is a guy called Dédé, a Dortmund legend in the early 2000s.
And this is a guy called Leandro, who also played at Dortmund in the same period.
Qatar wanted to naturalize all three of them in 2004.
Even though none of the Brazilians had any ties with the country whatsoever.
Qatar is usually strict when it comes to citizenship as John McManus knows, who wrote this book called “Inside Qatar”.
You cannot get it via birth, you can’t sometimes even get it via your mother. It has to pass down the male lineage.
So, only if your father was a Qatari are you eligible.
The Emir can make up to 50 people citizens a year but that’s obviously not a mechanism for mass citizenship.
Nonetheless, Qatar wanted to bend their own rules to get these Brazilians.
But FIFA blocked the move. And tightened requirements.
Footballers now need to spend at least some years in a country they wish to represent.
So, Qatar didn’t waste time. And went to Uruguay in a bid to fulfil these new requirements. Like in the case of Sebastián Soria.
He was brought to the Qatari League in 2004 and, in line with the new FIFA rules, could be naturalized in 2006.
Soria retired from the national team in 2017, still lives in Qatar, and is the second most capped Qatari international of all time
with 126 appearances.
Naturalized players soon became regulars for Qatar. Besides Soria, there was Brazilian Fabio Montezine.
And his compatriot Marcone.
But was that it – is this how Qatar won the Asian Cup 2019?
Football fans, you need to be strong now. We’ll change the sport for 30 seconds.
In 2015, Qatar hosted the handball World Cup and finished runners-up. Out of nowhere.
So, what on earth happened? Well, this: the Qataris were called: Capote, Marković, Roiné or Vidal.
Fine handballers, no doubt. But they originally hailed from Cuba, Montenegro, France, and Spain.
Was it the same pattern in football? Short answer: No.
Handball has more lax naturalization rules.
A year later, Qatar’s star-studded ensemble were knocked out in the quarterfinals of the Olympics.
30 seconds, you made it!
Qatar’s handball glory was short-lived.
Funding for the sport was cut dramatically.
But in football the cash kept flowing as Qatar continued to fund their massive talent school.
The Aspire Academy, a glittering palace built at a cost of 1.4 billion US dollars.
Hiba Sabbagh is a football expert from Jordan and has visited Aspire frequently.
Remember how many people in Qatar are actually citizens?
Correct: the population of Leicester.
Now, the Aspire Academy scouts 5,000 boys annually in Qatar, all aged 11.
The most talented ones get a grant for the Aspire Academy.
There, they are trained and receive school education from the ages of 12 to 18.
Aspire’s work doesn’t stop there though.
Thousands of kids were scouted in Africa, later also in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Between 2007 and 2014, 3.5 million boys from 17 countries were screened by Aspire.
3.5 million!
Is Aspire just making naturalization more covert?
By bringing in players from a younger age and then resettling them in the Gulf?
Qatar says: "No. We want to create more competition. And expose our kids to higher quality players.”
Just like back in the 80s when De Macedo took Qatar to Brazil.
And today, the Qatari league also wants to expose its local talents to internationally experienced foreigners.
It has been sporting ageing stars for years. And not just for marketing reasons.
From Marcel Desailly or Pep Guardiola in the 2000s, to Xávi Hernández in the 2010s, and James Rodríguez most recently.
Xávi’s annual salary in Qatar was believed to be up to 10 million US dollars.
But money aside, the objective is also to make Qatari players face the best of the best.
And experience can also be achieved outside Qatar. The Aspire Academy owns clubs in Europe.
Such as third Spanish division side Cultural Leonesa…
…and first division Belgian club KAS Eupen.
As of 2018, Aspire Academy also has an official partnership with Leeds United.
The goal: to first develop young Qataris at home, and then send them for some seasoning abroad.
And even if they don’t get much matchday experience,
they still benefit from the training facilities and the professional environment.
And when they return to Qatar with that experience, they compete with and against other national team prospects.
And this strategy has paid off:
Akram Afif and Almoez Ali were key players for Qatar when they won the Under-19 Asian Championship in 2014.
Afif scored the winner in the final against North Korea.
While Ali hit the net three times during the tournament.
And they weren’t the only ones to train at Aspire. The whole Qatari team was developed at the academy.
That generation went on to lift the big one: The Asian Cup in 2019.
Which managed to rally the Qatari population behind them.
Even before then you know many people watched the games or were interested.
But I think that that moment, they were truly a national team that everybody had heard of and that everybody followed.
Almoez Ali scored nine goals in that tournament and became the face of the squad.
Ali and Akim Afif’s paths are somewhat emblematic:
Ali spent seven years at Aspire. Then moved to Eupen.
Had a short spell at LASK in Austria – another club with links to Qatar. Then continued at Cultural Leonesa,
before returning home.
Similar story for left-winger Afif, who was the 2019 Asian Player of the Year.
After a stint at Eupen, he became the first Qatari in Spain’s La Liga at Villarreal.
Before returning home.
Now, winning a big international tournament makes you a close-knit group.
But there is more: All players from the 2022 Qatar team hail from the domestic league.
And they reached the semi-finals of the Gold Cup in 2021, going out to the United States.
US coach Gregg Berhalter said this about the Qatar national football team:
Is this model now completely free from naturalizations?
Short answer again: No!
The 2022 squad consists of 13 players born in Qatar. But 10 of them were still born overseas.
The difference, however?
Only three of the foreign-born players had no connection to Qatar before they arrived as professional footballers.
Top striker Ali is in a different category. He was born in Sudan but relocated to Qatar with his family as a young child.
Science calls this connection a “socio-economic citizenship”. A category that certainly applies to what other countries do:
For example, former Germany international Lukas Podolski was born in Poland.
France’s Samuel Umtiti in Cameroon.
Both left their home countries aged 2
and represented their countries of “socio-economic citizenship” so to say many moons later.
But back to Qatar:
Unlike those South Americans who were parachuted in previously,
players like Ali have ties to Qatar that go beyond just money.
And while Qatar’s coach Félix Sánchez Bas was parachuted in from Spain, that was back in 2006.
After a decade coaching the youth teams, he was promoted to the head coach role in 2017.
And he delivered the 2019 Asian Cup.
It appears the days when Qatar’s coaches only lasted a year or two are over.
This guy wins the biggest tournament that Qatar has ever won.
You know, obviously you can’t then sack the coach; this is the biggest success you have ever achieved.
Where is Qatar going with this scheme of chemistry, cohesion, and – still – naturalization?
Former Australia international Tim Cahill, Chief Sports Officer of Aspire Academy, says:
Qatar has turned into a continental giant in Asia.
Even though the country still has fewer than 7,500 registered footballers.
They managed to craft a team that outclassed a continent of 4.6 billion people.
The way they approach the building of a World Cup side has been actually kind of exemplary.
Getting good coaches, get kids young, and generate a culture of togetherness, and train them and keep them together,
and trying to eke out the best games you can.
Impressive...
or just oil money infused madness?
What do you think?
Aspire is a project obviously not too short on cash.
Then again, shouldn’t we praise Qatar for building a strong national team?
Even, if it’s down to money? It apparently works.
And just a quick disclaimer:
No, I’m not sponsored by Qatar Airways.
Looking forward to reading your comments, boys and girls.