Qatar have played exactly three World Cup matches in their history, and they lost all three. In 2022, as hosts, they became the first host nation ever eliminated in the group stage with zero points — a storyline that sat heavily over the entire tournament they'd spent 12 years and an estimated $220 billion preparing to stage. By the time Argentina won it in Lusail, the home team had been home for two weeks.
What's happened since has been quietly one of the more interesting rebuild stories in international football. Félix Sánchez, the coach who'd been with the Qatari setup for a decade, left. Bartolomé Márquez lasted a cycle. Julen Lopetegui — former Real Madrid and Spain manager, Wolves, more recently West Ham — took over in 2025 with a mandate to professionalize the operation and get the team ready for a World Cup where, for the first time, they'd arrived through genuine qualification rather than as hosts. Then Qatar won the 2024 Asian Cup, backing up their 2023 title, and suddenly the conversation changed.
They are not going to win Group L. They might win a match — and if they do, it's the most significant result in Qatari football history. The player who decides whether that happens is Akram Afif. Watch him.
Born in Doha to a Qatari mother and a Somali father who played professionally in Qatar, he's been the face of this project since his teens — a Villarreal loanee at 18, back home at Al-Sadd in his twenties, and now the two-time Asian Player of the Year. He scored three penalties in the 2023 Asian Cup final, then did it all over again in 2024. At 29 he's in form — 11 goals and 10 assists in 15 matches this QSL season. Qatar's tournament is Afif's tournament.
The striker who won the Golden Boot at the 2019 Asian Cup — nine goals in seven games, the year Qatar won their first continental title. Sudanese-born, naturalized, and one of the most prolific center-forwards in AFC history at just 29. The criticism is that he disappears against elite opposition; the counter is that he's never had elite service. In a group with Saudi Arabia, Peru, and Bolivia, he'll get chances.
The captain, the conscience, the player who's been in every important Qatar shirt since 2010. Club career entirely at Al-Sadd, where he's played over 450 matches. He's 35 now and in a late-career hybrid role — part midfielder, part locker-room organizer, part man the younger players stop talking when he walks into the room. If Qatar walk out of a group match with a point, chances are he's the one who steadied it in the 70th minute.
Machboos is the Qatari cousin of kabsa — basmati cooked in a broth built on black lime (loomi), cardamom, saffron, and tomato, finished with chicken or lamb that pulls apart with a spoon. What sets it apart is the loomi, which gives everything a slightly smoky, citrus-fermented note you don't get anywhere else. Finish with Arabic coffee (gahwa) spiced with cardamom and, if you're lucky, dates from Al Ahsa.
Fadi's Mediterranean Grill on Knox Street in Dallas — halal Lebanese that runs the kind of rice-and-slow-cooked-lamb platters that get you 80% of the way to a proper machboos, in a room friendly to big groups on a match day. DFW doesn't have a dedicated Qatari spot (it's a country of 300,000 citizens, so fair enough). Fadi's is the honest substitute: the kabsa-style plates are on the regular menu, the bread is warm and constant, and the Knox-Henderson location makes it easy to build an afternoon around.
A soundtrack for the matches, the pregame, and the afterparty.
Qatar's traveling support is small by global standards — the country's population is roughly the size of Fort Worth — but what shows up is loud, coordinated, and extremely well-dressed. Expect maroon (Al-Annabi means "the maroon"), expect family groups, expect the Al-Sadd ultras contingent who've been following Akram Afif around for most of a decade. The federation is spending serious money to put fans on planes to the U.S. for the group stage. At home matches in Doha the atmosphere lives and dies on a few call-and-response chants; bring those into a 70,000-seat NFL stadium in June and it will still sound like a crowd that desperately wants one thing: a first-ever World Cup win.
Qatar is the reigning back-to-back AFC Asian Cup champion — 2023 and 2024 — making them the first team since Japan in 2004 to win consecutive continental titles. Akram Afif was MVP of both, and scored a hat-trick of penalties in the 2023 final.