Will the Asian Cup championship help Qatar become an Asian power?

Win is win

Qatar's 3-1 victory over Jordan in the 2023 Asian Cup final has become a topic of discussion for many reasons.

The sensitive decisions of referee Ma Ning and VAR, the 3 penalties awarded in the final (for a single team) which are rare, as well as the unconvincing play of Qatar. Apart from the 3 penalty goals, Qatar played no better than Jordan. The host team was even pressured.

Qatar won the 2023 Asian Cup

However, amidst the emotional mainstream debate of fans, let's look at all three penalties that Qatar was awarded against Jordan. The first two situations were diagonal turns from the edge of the penalty area into the middle to "trap" the opponent, while in the final phase, Akram Afif proactively rushed into the Jordan goalkeeper to earn a penalty, at a time when Jordan's defenders were still hesitant, thinking that Qatar's number 11 was offside.

Qatar deliberately tried to get penalties at every opportunity, and it can only be said that the home team was more cunning than Jordan in just a few moments. It is not uncommon in football to trap opponents in the penalty area to find a penalty. In the match against Australia, Son Heung-min also won a penalty for Korea in the 90+5 minute, in a situation where he admitted to intentionally causing the opponent to commit a foul.

Qatar's problem is... there are too many situations like that, making the final not the football performance that all of Asia is waiting for. Jordan is too naive, and Qatar does not need to be beautiful, as long as they win. The team's sophistication is "refined" from both success (winning the 2019 Asian Cup) and humiliating failure, when they lost all the group stage of the 2022 World Cup. A failure that many people mock, Qatar spent a lot of money to organize the World Cup just to have a lesson that lasted only 3 matches.

Overall, Qatar's 2023 Asian Cup championship is not as convincing as 2019. 5 years ago, Akram Afif and his teammates were crowned with an unprecedented achievement: all wins. Qatar defeated many strong teams, including Saudi Arabia (2-0), Iraq (2-0), South Korea (1-0), UAE (4-0), before defeating Japan (3-1) to win the championship. Even in the final, coach Felix Sanchez and his team only conceded a goal for the first time.

Qatar is more cunning and cunning than Jordan

At the 2023 Asian Cup, Qatar won controversial matches against Tajikistan (1-0), Jordan (3-1), and struggled to overcome teams of equal caliber such as Uzbekistan or Iran, all thanks to individual moments or mistakes made by their opponents. However, that is football. The result is the most important, it can overshadow doubts (without basis), controversies and even regrets.

Reaching the top group in Asia? Not yet!

Winning the 2023 Asian Cup helped Qatar become the fifth team to successfully defend the title of Asia's No. 1. But will this achievement help coach Tintin Marquez's team stand on par with the best players like Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Australia?

Certainly not. Because the Asian Cup is not the only measure. The frequency of participation in the World Cup (and the mark created in this playground), the number of superstars, the quality of the national championship, the level of the club, football culture... are the factors that combine to create a football powerhouse, instead of a few pure titles.

Before hosting the 2022 World Cup, Qatar had never even qualified for the World Cup. The West Asian representative had made it to the final qualifying round a couple of times, but usually finished in the bottom two. In youth tournaments, Qatar’s football achievements were relatively poor: it had never won the U.23 continental championship, and had never qualified for the Olympics.

Qatar team needs more achievements to catch up with the leading group

At the club level, Qatari representatives such as Al-Sadd, Al Duhail, Qatar FC, Al-Rayyan... are hard to compare with the power of Japan and South Korea. In terms of the number of players playing in Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Iran all have at least 10 faces. As for Qatar, all the players participating in the 2023 Asian Cup are... playing domestically.

Qatar’s success over the past five years has come from two factors. Firstly, the talented generation of players trained at the Aspire Academy, notably Akram Afif and Almoez Ali, have developed well and become pillars of the team. At the 2019 Asian Cup, Ali was the top scorer, Afif was the king of assists. In this year’s tournament, Afif won the top scorer title with 8 goals, also winning the title of best player of the tournament.

Focusing on youth training and developing raw diamonds is a wise strategy that Qatar has followed over the past 15 years. In addition, Qatar has also strongly developed football infrastructure, not only to serve the World Cup, but also to create a foundation for the future.

With a population of only 2.7 million people, no sports tradition, it is hard to believe that Qatar can rise to the level of Asian powers that have been ahead for 20 or 30 years, such as Japan and South Korea. After the talented generation of Afif and Ali, will Qatari football have another generation of players to replace them, or will it fade away? That is the story of the future.

To rise to the ranks of the Asian "giants", Qatar must maintain its presence in the World Cup, gain more achievements in youth tournaments (such as the upcoming U.23 Asian finals), and perhaps need more real stars to go abroad. To take off, the Qatar team needs more than a runway like the Asian Cup.

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