One question for each 2026 World Cup team. What does the Qatari national do after the Qatar World Cup?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group B preview. You can also read previews of Canada, Switzerland, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
What does the Qatari national team do after the Qatar World Cup?
In December 2010, once the dust had cleared on the selection of Qatar as hosts for the 2022 World Cup, once people move past their shock and confusion and questions about the practicality of hosting a summer tournament in the Middle East or the seemingly corrupt bidding process, there was a very practical question still remaining: Is Qatar actually any good at this sport?
Which was a fair question: To that point, Qatar had never qualified for a World Cup, and had only once reached the knockout stage of the Asian Cup.
Qatar is a country that loves soccer, but also a country of just 3 million that only became wealthy relatively recently. Prior to the mid-2000s, Qatar was not really able to field a quality men’s international side.
But with the 2022 World Cup on the horizon, Qatar suddenly had a massive incentive to achieve at least a basic level of competence. The point of hosting the World Cup was to improve Qatar’s international image, which would have been pointless if the team embarrassed themselves.
So in addition to building the stadium and tourism infrastructure necessary for the tournament, and in addition to waging a near constant PR campaign against extensively documented reports of human rights abuses and death among the migrant workers building that infrastructure, Qatar also had to develop a real national team.
Which, more or less, they did. Most notoriously, they did this through the aggressive recruiting of what you would generously call “dual nationals” — and what you would ungenerously call “offering citizenship to some guys who happen to be playing in Qatar so that they can play for your national team.”
The classic example here is Sebastián Soria, who grew up in Uruguay but ended up in the Gulf after a not-super-eventful young career in South America, became a Qatari citizen, and has made 124 appearances for Qatar to date.
But Qatar also succeeded with internal player development, funneling money into the Doha-based Aspire Academy, a boarding school and sports complex that was founded in 2004 to foster more top-level athletes in the country. Akram Afif is probably the greatest Aspire success story, making his way to Europe for a time, and twice winning Asian Footballer of the Year.
Qatar’s all-time leading goalscorer is somewhere right between the two models. Almoez Ali spent his childhood in Sudan, but moved to Qatar to play football when he was still a child.
By the time that 2022 rolled around, Qatar had a team that at least had to be taken seriously. They won the Asia Cup in 2019, proving that they were at least competitive in their region, and beat some decent Concacaf teams on the way to a Gold Cup semifinal in 2021.
Qatar were never blown out at the 2022 World Cup, but they were not particularly competitive. They were notably bad in the opening half of the tournament against Ecuador, and while they stabilized from what looked like an imminent disaster, they never came particularly close to winning or even drawing a game.
But no one was able to run up the score against them, so in one sense, mission accomplished.1But maybe more of a George Bush on the battleship mission accomplished.
Now an expanded field in 2026 gives Qatar their first opportunity to play a World Cup without automatically qualifying.
It’s possible that finally being clear of 2022, and all the pressure that came with the level of scrutiny on the team and the nation, means the Qatari players are able to play with more freedom in the United States.
But the signs aren’t great. Despite a 2023 Asian Cup win, Qatar were far from convincing in 2026 World Cup qualification. They finished in a distant fourth place to the UAE, Uzbekistan, and Iran, and only managed to qualify via a round-robin playoff tournament which was conveniently played in Qatar2.Indonesia and Iraq both complained about this very loudly, and they were right to do so since they both had valid claims to home field advantage based on their relative performances through the qualification cycle. At the time of writing, they have the lowest ELO rating of any team in the tournament.
Qatar’s ability to get results against good teams outside of Qatar is very much up for debate. With three very competent squads in the rest of this group and goal difference potentially very meaningful for third place teams, it’s possible that Qatar’s success in not embarrassing themselves at home was just delaying the process for four years.
