World Cup Preview: #47 Qatar
Previewing Qatar's chances at the World Cup
Earlier today, I began a series in which I will break down all 48 World Cup teams.
For those who do not know, I have my own International Ratings, which I have built over the years, and you can find them here.
At the end of this series, I will post my final rankings before the World Cup begins. In addition, I will be simulating the World Cup, which will likely be released the week before the tournament starts.
I am currently going in reverse order of my rankings, starting with my lowest-rated team and working up to my top-ranked team.
In case you missed it, I started this series out with Haiti earlier today.
This will simply be a breakdown of each team. I will save my analysis for how they match up with each team for my group previews, which will come out a little closer to the week of the World Cup.
Next up is my 47th-ranked team: Qatar.
How did they get here?
Since they were the hosts of the last World Cup, Qatar did not have to go through the qualifying process.
Asian World Cup qualifying consists of essentially five rounds.
Qatar cruised through a pretty easy second-round group, winning five of their six matches against pretty bad competition.
Second Round Qualifying
They were put into Group A for the third round of qualifying, which did include some decent teams, but they barely skated by, finishing fourth and pushing them into a fourth-round playoff.
Third Round Qualifying
They had the benefit of hosting both matches against the United Arab Emirates and Oman, with everything on the line.
They beat the United Arab Emirates 2-1 and drew with Oman, securing a spot in the World Cup.
Fourth Round Qualifying
As we will get into below, it was not by any means an “impressive” qualifying campaign for Qatar. If the World Cup hadn’t expanded to 48 teams, they wouldn’t have even come close to qualifying.
Qatar Stats
Qatar went on a crazy good run during the Asian Cup on home soil in 2024. They did get a favorable group, but did beat Iran, Uzbekistan, and Jordan on their way to winning the title.
The problem is that when you look a little closer, you’ll see that after their first two wins over Tajikistan and Lebanon, they lost the xG battle in every single match.
Overall, Qatar has scored 55 goals from 40.04 xG, so they have drastically overperformed their xG over the last three years.
What I find interesting about Qatar is that at the last World Cup, they were clearly in over their heads because they lost all three matches and were outscored seven to one.
Throughout World Cup qualifying, they were outshot 7.7 to 7.9 per 90 minutes.
The one thing about Qatar is that they create most of their chances via crosses. During the third round of qualifying, they attempted the third-most crosses, behind only Iran and Uzbekistan.
Qatar Key Players
Qatar has two main players in their attacks.
Almoez Ali led World Cup qualifying with 12 goals, but you kind of have to put an asterisk next to that because he scored seven of those goals in the second round. He also won the Golden Boot at the 2024 Asian Cup.
He is coming off a really bad leg injury that has kept him out of pretty much the entire club season for Al-Duhail. Since August of 2025, he has only appeared in four matches. He returned to the pitch on April 4th and has scored only one goal this season.
Akrim Afif is legit one of the best players in the Arabic world. There is no other way to describe him other than a pure baller.
During World Cup qualifying, he scored four goals and dished out a whopping 11 assists.
When you watch his highlights, you’ll see he is really somebody who should have been playing in Europe a long time ago.
However, he struggled at the 2022 World Cup when he had to face much better competition.
Qatar Tactics
Julian Lopetegui, you probably thought he was done after getting sacked by West Ham. Nope, he’s back managing the Qatar National Team.
He took over as recently as May 1st, 2025, so Qatar has had only four competitive matches under his tenure. I don’t put much stock in friendlies, but been going well for Qatar since he took over.
image via footystats.org
Lopetegui’s downfall at West Ham stemmed from his attempt to take a low-block defending team and turn them into something they were not. What I find interesting about his Qatar team is defending wise, things haven’t really changed.
He has them defending typically out of a 5-3-2, which is perfectly fine, but physicality and defending on the back line is a real problem for Qatar when they run into tough competition.
Take this example against Uzbekistan.
Qatar is defending in a 5-3-2.
Uzbekistan can play a simple ball over the top and set up a decent chance.
Before Lopetegui arrived, Qatar held over 50% possession in every World Cup qualifying match.
That changed a little bit, but Lopetegui’s main goal is to always build out of the back and play through opponents.
That tactical system worked when he was in charge of Sevilla and the Spanish national team, but trying to implement that with a team that can’t really pull it off unless they are playing teams well below them isn’t the best approach.
Take, for example, his first match in charge against Iran. He’s trying to create four-man combinations, overloading the opponent to play through them.
When Qatar does get into the final third, Lopetegui historically is a manager who likes to play through the wide areas. That fits in well with Qatar because, as I mentioned above, they attempted the third-most crosses in the third round of qualifying.
Lopetegui-ball can work with the right players, but doing it with Qatar against better competition than they’ve faced in qualifying is likely to backfire.
They are going to have to use Almoez Ali as a target man and play more directly than Lopetegui wants. Otherwise, we are going to have a very similar story to what we saw at the 2022 World Cup.