Hello and welcome everybody to Soccer 101.

My name is Taylor Rockwell and on today's episode, we're taking a look at Qatar at the

2022 World Cup. Much has been and will continue to be written and said about the host nation itself,

the human rights abuses, hosting restrictions, hotel shortages, much, much more. We've talked about

all that on the show. We'll continue to do so as we edge closer

to the tournament itself. Less time has been spent, less ink as well, on the Qatar national

team itself, a team that has never qualified for the World Cup before, but will now be there

automatically as the host. What is their soccer history? How have they prepared for their

moment on the global stage?

What should we expect from them in terms of style and results? We're going to get into that today to answer those and many other questions I have with me, Joe Lowry. Hello, Joe. Ahoy. And Graham Ruffin. Hi, Graham. Hello, Tilla Rottwell. Hello. All right. We, as I said, have talked a lot about Qatar hosting, the Qatar World Cup, the bid process.

Joe, we have talked a little bit about Qatar because they participated in that gold cup way back when, aka not that long ago.

But I don't think even then we really became as familiar as we could have been because it was still a team

that we didn't know that much about. We didn't expect them to go deep. They ended up third

in that competition. So let's take a look at their history, shall we? Let's start with the

beginning. I think the sport was brought to the country by foreign oil workers in the 1940s.

They joined FIFA in 1970, played their first

official match that same year. Joe, how have things gone since 1970? So in recent years,

things have gone well for guitar. And we'll talk about some of the reasons, some of the questionable

reasons behind why that's the case, even with the on-field stuff. But I think if you're looking up to,

I don't know, 2010, 2014, up until maybe around a decade ago, we saw really slow progress,

progress from a fledgling soccer nation to a still pretty mediocre soccer nation that has

never qualified for a World Cup on its own merit.

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