Pitch-side at Doha’s sweltering Abdullah bin Khalifa football stadium, coach Felix Sanchez barks instructions at his Qatar under-23 team. “Out of here!” he screams as his players run the ball into a channel filled with Palestinian defenders. “Yalla shabab!” he shouts in Arabic. “Let’s go, lads!” He shakes his head, fuming, as football coaches do.
It is late September and an early-round tie of the West Asian Cup, in front of no more than 200 spectators and against a poor opposition, in more ways than one. Three of Palestine’s players, from Gaza, have hardly played with their West Bank-based team-mates, because it is so difficult for them to travel through Israel. They are a tough-tackling bunch. Sanchez’s players, by contrast, are hothouse flowers: the carefully groomed sons of the small Qatari middle class, who lack for nothing when it comes to coaching, facilities and preparation.
Marshalling the Qatar defence is the captain, Musaab Khidir, a charismatic 22-year-old with braces on his teeth and light-footed poise. In midfield is Ahmad Moein, the 19-year-old fulcrum of the team, a player who models his passing game on videos of former England star Frank Lampard. In an otherwise empty stand, three Palestinian fans resolutely wave their national flag as their players wilt in the 30C evening heat and Qatar ease to a 3-0 win.
Even against mediocre opposition, you can understand Sanchez’s urgency. The former youth coach at Barcelona FC’s La Masia academy, which has turned out superstars such as Lionel Messi, is now in charge of a squad expected to form the core of the side to play in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, perhaps the most controversial global sporting event since the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
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