Qatar at the FIFA World Cup

Qatar national football team has never qualified for any single FIFA World Cup since the country's independence at 1971. While Qatar has been a regular participant in the continental AFC Asian Cup, the national side has always fallen short in the final stage of World Cup campaigns. By hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup and its failure to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in Russia, Qatar became the second nation after Italy in 1934 FIFA World Cup to play in World Cup without qualifying for it.[1]

Previous disgraced President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, awarded the hosting rights of 2022 World Cup for Qatar, thus prompted many controversies around him and the decision, thus angered many people for awarding a country with no competitive World Cup history nor even with football culture.[2] Outside the problem of lacking football culture, Qatar is also facing criticisms over workers' terrible conditions in the country, time schedule and money bribery to host the edition,[3] which is denied by Qatar.

Qatar has brought some significant improvement however, which included the surprising 2019 AFC Asian Cup conquest, which is considered as important as a way Qatar wants to show that they could manage even more surprise in the maiden World Cup debut in spite of criticisms;[4] and also a stunning performance in 2019 Copa América by a 2–2 comeback draw to former champions and World Cup quarter-finalist Paraguay,[5] despite unable to manage another shocking conquest like the team did in Asian Cup earlier after bowing down 0–1 to Colombia[6] and 0–2 to Argentina.[7]