Man-of-the-match, Akram Afif kisses the AFC Asian Cup trophy after Qatar’s historic title win in Abu Dhabi, on Friday.
Catch them young, they say. Qatar did exactly that.
Bringing in Felix Sanchez to groom the junior squad was a smart move from Qatar Football Association (QFA) more than half a decade ago.
Sanchez, the Barcelona native, did not disappoint the moment he arrived in Qatar. A man of few words at the best of times, Sanchez first narrowed down a core group of players who would train under his direct tutelage.
The young bunch of players - mostly based at the Aspire Academy - were quick off the blocks as Sanchez set about his task of polishing their talents. Success came early but the seed for greater glory was well and truly planted.
In October 2014, Qatar edged past North Korea to lift the U-19 AFC Asian Cup in Myanmar. Guess who scored in the tense final nearly five years ago? Akram Afif was the goal hero as Qatar beat North Korea to lift the Asian Cup for juniors!
Showing early promise, Afif was drafted into the senior squad in September 2015 by former coach Daniel Carreno. Afif scored once in Qatar’s 15–0 win against Bhutan in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match.
Afif - who scored the third goal in Qatar’s 3-1 win over Japan in the AFC Asian Cup on Friday - is one of the players to branch out from the junior squad and graduate to the seniors in style.
Afif, who belongs to a family of football players, was the key man as he assisted team-mate Almoez Ali in netting the spectacular first goal against Japan on Friday. Seconds later, it was Afif - who has previously represented Eupen in Belgium and Sporting Gijon in Spain - who found Abulaziz Hatem with another assist that resulted in goal number two for Qatar at Zayed Sports City Stadium.
Almoez, the Most Valuable Player at the 2019 Asian Cup with a record 9 goals from just 7 matches, is another young player to come through the ranks. Almoez - who even impressed Jose
Mourinho with his ‘agility and speed’ despite ‘being a tall player’ - was the toast of the entire 24-team tournament held in the UAE.
Mourinho, in Doha as a guest expert for beIN, went lyrical in describing the young man’s fine talent.
“I think this boy Almoez is agile. He moves fast (and) he is cool in the face of the keeper,” Mourinho said.
“He plays at an interesting level and who knows in the next couple of years, this boy could be playing in another league so that he becomes more competitive. He is young, he is 180cm (in height) and that’s a good size. The objective of this kid is to play. If Qatar wants him to be better, then they need him to be playing in a better league. He is an important player. He needs to go to a competitive league and not playing all the time. That’s the balance you have to find.
“(Former Qatar player) Mubarak Mustafa was telling me that Almoez plays many times from the wings. I didn’t know this. I think in this kind of football that they (Qatar) are trying to play, sometimes it is good to have a striker who has wing connection (gestures flying motion with his hands),” Mourinho said.
“If you don’t want a target man (in your side), then it is better to have somebody like him. So you need a player who can adapt. It is good to have that philosophy. If Qatar national team are playing like this, drop the players back, create some space to take the speed off the opponents,” Mourinho, known as ‘The Special One’, explained.
Almoez was part of the Qatar squad for the 2015 FIFA U-20 World Cup staged in New Zealand. The tall striker played in the three group stage matches though Qatar - managed by Sanchez - did not advance to the knockout stage of the FIFA tournament but the young players got exposed to top flight football. A year later in August 2016, Ali made his Qatar national team debut as a substitute in a 2-1 win against Iraq. Ali was a member of the Qatar squad that featured at the Gulf Cup in Kuwait in December 2017 and just a few weeks later, he emerged as the top scorer in the 2018 AFC U-23 Championship held in China. Ali fired 6 goals as Qatar - coached by Sanchez - finished third.
Almoez summed up his partnership with Afif - who clocked a tournament-record 10 assists during the victorious campaign - when he said on Friday: “We’ve been together seven years so I know exactly where Akram will be, where he will pass and he always knows what to expect from me. That’s normal after all the time we’ve spent playing together. We get along very well together too.”
Almoez even had words of praise for his coach: “I’ve been working with him for nine years, he’s highly intelligent. I compare him to Guardiola because he has the same ideas.”
Besides Afif and Almoez, reserve goalkeeper Yousef Hassan, stocky defender Assim Madibo and midfielder Salem Al Hajri are some of the Aspire Academy colts to have reached the national team under coach Sanchez. A total of 13 players from the 23 in the Asian Cup squad are from the Aspire Academy, making up a staggering 57 percent of the entire squad in the UAE.
Coach Sanchez warned experts on Friday: “We’re happy with the results, because we won, and in our analysis these players are able to compete against all the national teams in Asia and that’s a big step for us. Now we’re looking forward to developing the players, because it’s a very young squad and they performed very well. But the good thing is we can see that we can still grow as a team and we can go forward.”
Well played, Qatar!
