Fans crowd around big screens throughout the city to watch
soccer along the waterfront in Doha, or at the upscale Pearl Marina. Streets
are canopied by the national flags of the 32 teams playing in this year’s World
Cup, and restaurants are packed. So is the fan zone, where Colombian singer
Maluma performed on the eve of the opening game.
The only thing missing is a winning team.
Qatar became the first host nation in World Cup history to
lose the opening match, and then only the second host to be eliminated from the
group stage. South Africa in 2010 was the first to be eliminated in group stage
but still had a chance to advance in its third and final group match.
Not Qatar. This time the host was eliminated after just two
games — a 2-0 loss to Ecuador in the World Cup opener, then a 3-1 loss to
Senegal — to make Tuesday’s match against the Netherlands meaningless for the
Qataris.
A total flop?
Qatar coach Felix Sanchez says absolutely not.
“I think these players have achieved a great deal over the
last years. Now we need to be aware that to compete at this level, we are still
lagging behind,” Sanchez said the day before Qatar’s final match. “I think if
we work at this on a daily basis, gradually we will be closer to this level.
“I don’t feel disappointed or embarrassed,” Sanchez
continued. “The World Cup is the most demanding competition, and only a few can
be here. We are still slightly behind. The country will continue working so
that the next time Qatar comes to a World Cup — hopefully soon — we’ll be able
to compete better than we did this time.”
Qatar spent at least $200 billion on the infrastructure
required to host the global soccer tournament. There’s no known figure on what
it spent to build an actual team, an endeavor in which Qatar had 12 years to
scout prospects, develop talent, and assemble a squad capable of competing
against the best in the world.
The final 26 selected indeed includes 16 Qatar-born players.
But the first-ever goal for Qatar at the World Cup was scored by Mohammed
Muntari, who was born in Ghana, and the roster includes players born in
Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Iraq and Sudan.
In preparation for the World Cup, Qatar wooed other
confederations to play against its team in an effort to improve. The team
received guest entries into the South American and CONCACAF championships, and
played friendlies that were loosely attached to qualifying for the 2020
European Championship. It was all tied to Qatar Airways sponsorship and beIN TV
rights.
It was not without controversy: Following a 4-0 loss to
Qatar in the 2019 Asian Cup semifinals, the United Arab Emirates protested the
eligibility of Sudanese-born Almoez Ali and Iraqi-born Bassam Al-Rawi. The case
was dismissed when Qatar presented evidence claiming Ali’s mother was born in the
country.
Qatar won that tournament for the first time in its history,
beating regional powerhouse Japan in the final.
“To go back 12 years, the vast majority of the Qatari
national team were expatriates. Today the vast majority are Qataris,” said Dr.
James Dorsey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Rajaratnam School of
International Studies in Singapore.
“But it’s a small country. It’s a small pool they can draw
from. They are by definition disadvantaged by countries that are much bigger,”
he continued. “For those who look at this in purely sporting terms, yes, it is
important that they are the first to lose an opening match and to crash out in
the group stage. I think in a broader perspective, that’s not going to make a
big difference to the government.”
Qatar, which did not play its first official match until
1970 and counts only 300,000 citizens among the population of 2.9 million, did
not land the World Cup to win the World Cup.
The tournament instead was meant to elevate the profile of
this energy-rich nation like no other event before it.
Qatar’s hope was that the tournament improves its
relationship with neighboring Saudi Arabia, which only two years earlier had
been part of a four-nation boycott of the country. And Qatar cemented its ties
with the West as a hedge in case of further political trouble ahead in the
volatile Middle East.
“We knew from the start that this was a long shot for Qatar,
given their lack of history and given where they were,” said Alexi Lalas, a
member of the United States’ 1994 team and now a Fox Sports analyst.
“I think they also look at this as, yeah, it would be nice,
but this is still that advertisement to the world,” Lalas added. “Whether their
team is in it or not, this is about showing the country and obviously they
still have many more weeks here to kind of do that.”
Qatar will host the Asian Cup soccer tournament in 2023, the
multi-sport Asian Games in 2030 and is eyeing a bid on the 2036 Olympics. The
seven new stadiums — controversially constructed by foreign laborers — will
mostly be resized after the tournament and Lusail Stadium, where 88,966
spectators watched Argentina beat Mexico last weekend in the largest crowd at a
World Cup match in 28 years, will be overhauled into a multi-use facility.
And despite the early World Cup exit, Qatar’s soccer team is
expected to continue to develop and grow, and perhaps even someday rival Middle
East powerhouse teams including Iran and Saudi Arabia, which both won
group-stage matches at this year’s World Cup.
“Of course as a player, we would have wanted the Qatari fans
to be proud of us. It wasn’t our fate to win. But thank God we were at least
able to score in the World Cup,” Ali said. “This was our first participation in
the World Cup. We hope it will not be the last.”
Qatar received an automatic berth as host to play in this
year’s World Cup, but will shift its focus toward qualifying for future
tournaments through its on-field play. The next World Cup in North America will
be expanded from 32 to 48 teams and Asia will get eight guaranteed spots
instead of four, making it easier to qualify for the tournament.
Mohammed Abdulrahim, a Qatari who said he was part of the
organizing committee for the tournament’s opening ceremony, thought
expectations were too big for the young national team.
“That’s why they lost their chance, don’t forget it is their
first World Cup and in their country. It was too much pressure... still we are
proud,” said Abdulrahim, adding Qataris are enjoying the chance to showcase the
country.
“We have a message for all the people: We are people who
like peace, we like to make friendship. World Cup for us and the whole Arab
world is a chance to see our face,” he said. “I think you’ll see the country
how safe it is, that’s a point, that’s a goal. Still we have positive things
happening, not negative things happening.”
Dorsey said the verdict is out on whether this tournament
met all of Qatar’s goals, but even with the on-field disappointment, the
country has made strides.
“I don’t know that the World Cup is a zero-sum game. This is
a major accomplishment, but it’s not the end of the game,” Dorsey said. “The
Qatar World Cup will have a legacy of social change: workers conditions have
improved in Qatar. Whether you think they’re good or bad, or enough was done,
is a different question. But it’s the only Gulf state with a minimum wage.
Could it have been higher? Absolutely.
“The fact of the matter is, there’s been a number of other
of those things, so there has been social change which probably would not have
come about without the World Cup,” Dorsey continued. “I think ultimately the
soccer team will still perform. Look at China. Football is extremely important
to (China leader Xi Jinping) and he’s poured a fortune into it, and they’re
nowhere. In that sense, Qatar is certainly further than the Chinese are.” -AP