What do Qatar bring to the Gold Cup?

 

The 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup is set to kick off on July 10th, with a qualifying round starting on July 2nd to settle the final three spots in the 16-team group stage. In the field you have your usual suspects; Mexico, USA, Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, etc. But you'll also spot in Group D the return of an old Gold Cup tradition; the guest team. This time around it is 2022 Men's World Cup hosts Qatar, who are making their Gold Cup debut.

Qatar are a very often misunderstood team in this part of the world, so I wanted to bring a little clarity to what exactly they bring to the Gold Cup this year. 

They're good. Real good. Much talk has been made about how Qatar will be likely the worst team to ever host the World Cup, but over the past few years I think they have certainly shown they are very much at a World Cup level. Qatar are actually the reigning Asian champions, having won the 2019 AFC Asian Cup in dominating fashion. It might even be fair to say that their performance in 2019 was the most dominating in the history of the Asian continental championships. 

In that tournament, Qatar won 7 out of 7 matches, scored 19 goals, and conceded just once, to Japan in the final. They beat 2018 World Cup participants Saudi Arabia (2-0), South Korea (1-0), and Japan (3-1) and thrashed the UAE 4-0 in the semifinals. They were far and away the best team in Asia, a confederation that at the top is often measured to be at a similar level to Concacaf. It's very fair to say at the time Qatar were on par even with Mexico.

Almoez Ali scored nine goals at that tournament, and his partner in crime Akram Afif had 10 assists. A total of 8 Qataris made the team of the tournament.

They've got experience. Besides for their Asian Cup run, this generation of players also were able to play in the 2019 Copa America later that year, where they didn't fare nearly as well, finishing with only one point. To be fair, it was a tough group; they drew Paraguay and lost 1-0 to Colombia and 2-0 to Argentina.

The experience of traveling to the Americas to play an international tournament will not be a new one for many of these players, though of course they've never done so during a pandemic. But having a better feel for the travel and schedule can't hurt, and their group of Honduras, Panama and Grenada certainly is much weaker than what they faced in Brazil 2019.

They aren't bending the rules. Much fuss has been made in the past about Qatar naturalizing athletes from other countries to compete at the Olympics and in other sports, and this has carried over to football. Many people upon hearing that Qatar dominated the Asian Cup wanted to know which Brazilians had moved over there. I think talking about the rules on naturalizing citizens is a dicey discussion, but we actually don't have to get deep into it here because Qatar's football team isn't really built that way.

Of the 11 starters from that Asian Cup run, seven were born in Qatar and two more moved there when they were toddlers (one of those two, young star Almoez Ali, is also eligible through his Qatari born mother). Simply put, the criticisms of them abusing the rule about naturalized citizens are made up. And of course this is to say nothing of the fact that international football is a game played by international citizens, and many (most!) national teams have taken to recruiting dual nationals and naturalizing players. There is nothing wrong with that; but even if there were, Qatar are hardly the worst offenders.

There are lots of things to be mad at Qatari World Cup organizers about, but there is nothing villainous about the football team itself. Unless you are a big Japan fan, I suppose. Hopefully they bring with them some of their early 2019 form and put on a good show. How far will they go? It's conceivable that they win the whole thing, but it's also more than possible they flunk out of a strong group with Honduras and Panama. I'll pencil them in as losing a tight quarterfinal match-up against Mexico.