In 2011, the great football writer Brian Glanville referred to Qatar as a “wretched little anonymity of a football country”.

11 years later, that sentiment was repeated by almost everyone I mentioned Qatari football to.

There can be an incredibly fine line between legitimate criticism and lazy discrimination, and one is often lumped in with the other for dramatic effect.

Since winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup, Qatar has rightly come under heavy scrutiny for its LGBT+ and human rights abuses.

But not giving this tiny country’s footballing history and heritage its due can invite the racism allegations which the Qataris have recently brandished.

This is a nation which, despite having a population of just 476,000 as late as 1990, twice came within a game of qualifying for the World Cup. They also came second at the 1981 Fifa World Youth Championship and have competed in football at two Olympic Games.

They did this all with Qatari-born players, before Sheikh Hamad Al Thani had deposed his father in a bloodless coup and triggered the nation’s exponential financial and political growth.

More recently, this country of fewer than 7,500 registered footballers won the 2019 Asian Cup, not conceding a goal until their 3-1 final victory over Japan.

James Montague, author of “When Friday Comes: Football Revolution in the Middle East and the road to Qatar”, told i: “There’s a lot of very valid criticisms of Qatar but comments like Glanville’s make us in the West look like we are engaging in orientalism.

“That is something that the Qataris are using a lot at the moment – the idea that [criticism against them] is racism, orientalism, a conspiracy.

“A lot of that is a way to deflect legitimate criticism. Quotes like Glanville’s give them a legitimate reason to deflect.”

Montague points to qualification for the 1998 World Cup as a lost turning point for Qatari football. In front of 20,000 fans at Doha’s Khalifa Stadium, Qatar lost 1-0 to Saudi Arabia in a must-win tie which would have taken them to France ’98.

( Source :- George Simons ( INews)

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