Qatar continue their AFC Asian Cup campaign tonight at the Al Bayt Stadium looking to make it two wins from two and secure their place in the knockout rounds.
While the architectural wonder, with it’s bedouin tent-style design, was one of the iconic stadiums of Qatar’s World Cup for the host nation it’s a venue that induces more pain than pleasure.
It was at the stadium in Al Khor, about a 45 minute drive north of Doha, that Qatar’s opening night humiliation against Ecuador played out. A defeat, in truth, that it feels like they are still trying to overcome.
A further 0-2 loss to the Netherlands in the final group stage game bookended their Al Bayt misery.
As they prepare to return to the stadium for the first time since the World Cup, it’s a reminder that their World Cup capitulation, and the tag of ‘chokers’ is not something they’ve yet been able to shake.
The defending champions started their AFC Asian Cup defence in fine style at the Lusail Stadium, a stadium they never got to experience at the World Cup, with a comfortable 3-0 victory over Lebanon, showing flashes of the Qatar side that swept all before them in 2019.
But it also served as a reminder of the huge opportunity they let slip just over 12 months prior. That World Cup humiliation still hangs as an albatross around their neck.
As the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression and Qatar failed miserably at theirs.
For as impressive as their success in the UAE was back in 2019, judgement day was always going to come in the form of a World Cup on home soil. The Asian Cup, for all its history and prestige in this part of the world, doesn’t carry the same cache elsewhere.
So the World Cup is where the final judgement would be cast in stone.
For all the investment, for all the development, for all the countless hours spent in camps preparing for this moment, they simply had to deliver. Without going over old ground and reopening old wounds, deliver they most certainly did not.
As large parts of the world, particularly in western Europe, bathed in the Schadenfreude, Qatar was left humiliated and broken.
As they slowly begin to pick up the pieces, the spectre of that failure looms large over the Maroons at this tournament.
The departure of Carlos Queiroz on the eve of the tournament only added to the perception that this is a team and a nation still in turmoil.
Hope was replaced with pessimism pre-tournament, according to Qatari journalist, Ahmed Hashim.
“Coming into this tournament, I think even with Carlos Queiroz people were not happy,” he told The Asian Game Podcast.
“With ‘Tintin’ Marquez Lopez, even then a lot of people don’t know what to expect, and there are complaints about the selections that he has made. Especially with names like Assim Madibo missing out.
“And there’s the big, big exclusion of Abdelkarim Hassan, who has continued to be out of the picture for a long time now after the World Cup and the problems that he has had with the national team management.
“So I can say that a significant section of the fan community here, they’re not happy with the way Qatar football is progressing.”
On the evidence of their opening night win over Lebanon, however, there is evidence that this side is starting to put 2022 behind them.
Akram Afif was at his dynamic best, scoring twice and generally displaying that type of form that won him so many admirers back in 2019. Almoez Ali was back among the goals, and Yusuf Abdurisag, who wasn’t part of the squad for the World Cup, provided an added dynamic to their attack.
While we wait to see if they can successfully defend their title, their failure to produce in these very stadiums just over 12 months ago remains fresh in the memory, and it feels like anything they achieve for the foreseeable future will be judged against those performances of 2022 and will come with a very large asterisk attached.
That asterisk comes in the form of one very large ‘but…’.
Yes they defended their title, but…
Yes Akram Afif and Almoez Ali starred again, but…
That ‘but’, you feel, will take time to dislodge, regardless of what they achieve.
While that may be the case for fans and viewers around the world, the players insist they have already put the World Cup heartache behind them.
“The World Cup is behind us,” Afif told reporters after the Lebanon game.
“We have even forgotten about 2019. We are living in a new day. We need to win the second match, or we can’t be the champion this time. So we don’t think too far ahead.”
In the meantime, as Afif said, all this Qatar team is win games of football. One step and one game at a time, as their coach, ‘Tintin’ Marquez expressed before the game.
“From the first day I’ve said that we have to take it one match at a time, we want to lead and we want to go to the second round, that objective hasn’t changed.”
Tonight they face Tajikistan.
While it’s not Ecuador or the Netherlands, the Central Asian side will still present a challenge to Marquez’s side as they look to exorcise their Al Bayt demons.
Additional reporting by Sudesh Baniya
