Qatar won the championship for a second time, what is the secret of their success
Peninsula All Media Reporter Pan Lichao
In the early morning of February 11, Beijing time, the final of the 2023 Qatar Asian Cup came to an end, and the host Qatar team defeated Jordan, the biggest dark horse, 3:1. In this final, referee Ma Ning from China awarded three penalties to the host Qatar team, and Afif hit all the penalties and scored a hat-trick of penalties. This is also the second time in Qatar's history to win the Asian Cup (2019 and 2023), heralding the rise of a new force in Asian football.
If the Qatar team was able to win the final championship in the last Asian Cup, it played a miracle of winning the championship as a dark horse, then in this Asian Cup, the performance of the Qatar team shows the temperament of a strong team. This Asian Cup, which was originally planned to be held in China, was finally relocated to Qatar, and the Qatar team, as the host, can be said to have the right time and place.
In the group stage and the round of 16 knockout rounds, the Qatar team basically did not encounter much test, and can fully inspect and rotate the lineup, when entering the quarterfinals, the Qatar team showed strong resilience and on-the-spot adaptability, even Uzbekistan and Iran entered the final, in the final with Afif's penalty hat trick finally won the championship, from the replay, the referee Ma Ning's three penalty decisions are basically not too controversial. However, the Chinese men's football team did not play its best level in this tournament due to many reasons, and encountered many controversial penalties that led to unfavorable results. If the referee did not deliberately target the Chinese team, the Chinese team could have scored at least one goal to win one game and qualify for the group with 4 points, so as not to set the worst result in the history of the Asian Cup.
The national football team and Qatar can still win and lose each other, but in this tournament, Qatar can easily defeat the national football team in the case of playing as a substitute, and won the championship in two consecutive Asian Cups.
At the beginning of this century, in order to quickly improve the competitiveness of the national team, Qatar chose the "shortcut" of player naturalization, and many South American players did play a role in Qatar to a certain extent, but Qatar is always short of breaking into the World Cup. After China's 2004 Asian Cup group exit, the Qatar Football Association learned from the pain and was determined to fundamentally solve the problem of lack of football talent.
As we all know, Qatar is a small country, and it is not easy to find good seedlings. With the support of the national strategy, the Aspire Sports Academy on the one hand recruits naturalized "potential stocks" in Asia, Africa and Latin America through scouting, and on the other hand, fully taps the potential of local clubs and attracts talented young players through scholarships and other means. With Qatar's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup, football has become a core project of the Academy. We have hired professional coaches and management talents from developed European football countries such as Germany and Spain, and established a perfect scouting system, and also solved the worries of playing football for young players as much as possible.
Since winning the U19 Asian Cup in 2014, Qatar has reached the semi-finals of Asian competitions of all ages six times in the past ten years. Twenty-one of the 23 members of the Qatari national team, who won the Asian Cup in the UAE in 2019, came from Aspire Academy, and over the past 20 years, Qatari football, which is committed to youth development and talent development, has gone from the top three in Asia to one of the top teams.
"We are well aware that the Qatari team may not be able to maintain a high level due to the small football population. After a group of players achieve results, the strength of the team will decline, and then it will have to be rebuilt. "But the development of Aspire is proof that if a well-developed football development strategy is developed and implemented efficiently over the long term, the national team can succeed even with only 6,500 players." ”