Qatar's Asian Cup flop augurs ill for 2018 World Cup shot

By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The furore over the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar shows no sign of abating and a miserable Asian Cup showing by the Gulf nation indicates critics could soon have a solid footballing argument for opposing the move.

If Qatar fail to make it to the next World Cup in Russia in 2018, they would be the first hosts since the earliest days of the tournament never to have competed in a finals before welcoming football's showpiece event to their own shores.

In very different times, Italy hosted the 1934 World Cup without taking part in the first World Cup in 1930 but ever since, the host nation have earned the right to play in a finals at least once before qualifying automatically for their own tournament.

Qatar's failure to progress beyond the group stage at the Asian Cup after three defeats against just the sort of countries they will need to beat to qualify for the 2018 World Cup makes this scenario now look highly likely.

The man currently charged with building a squad capable of competing at the very top table in 2018 and 2022 is former Marseille midfielder Djamel Belmadi, who took over after Qatar failed to reach last year's finals in Brazil.

SIMPLY FOUNDERED

The Algerian has enjoyed some success in his brief time in charge, winning the West Asian Football Federation Championship last January and the Gulf Cup in November, but his squad simply foundered in Australia.

Stunned 4-1 by the United Arab Emirates in their opener and beaten 1-0 by an effervescent Iran in their second match, they spurned a string of chances and lost 2-1 to Bahrain on Monday.

"We wanted to win a game here at least, we came with a lot of expectation, we lost all three so obviously, we are very disappointed. For the positive things, I will think of those later," Belmadi said.

"We had three competitions this year, we won two of them. I'm not sure the Asian Cup performance is about our level, maybe it is too much for us to play too many competitions in one year."

With an eye to the future, the Algerian brought a young squad to Australia with only one of his 23 over the age of 30.

Two players of African heritage -- Mohammad Abdullah and Mohammed Muntari -- were included even though neither had been capped by Qatar before and Belmadi said inexperience explained if not excused the team's poor showing.

"If we work well with this squad we can have a future," he told reporters after the loss to Iran.

"There are many things we need to fix in our country and with our league, our federation, to give a chance to these players to improve.

"We didn't come here for experience, we wanted to qualify for the second stage.

"But I still believe in this group. They have quality and if we take care of them, we can have a better team for the next qualification for the World Cup."

TALENT LACKING

Further complicating Belmadi's work is the fact that the majority of forwards in the cash-rich domestic league are foreigners, leaving him a dearth of forward talent to select from.

Despite Muntari being the worst offender in missing chances against Bahrain, Belmadi said he thought the youngster was still the solution to Qatar's lack of a genuine threat up front.

"This was his first tournament with the national team," he said.

"Today he was unlucky, he had a lot of touches and got in good positions, he will be good for the future because we lacked a real No.9 and even if didn't score in this competition, I know he will score in the future."

The Qataris came closest to qualifying for the World Cup in 1997 when, needing a draw from their last qualifier against Saudi Arabia to get to France '98, they lost 1-0.

Having gone through almost a coach a year since then, Belmadi might not make it through to qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, let alone the 2022 campaign.

"You need to ask the federation," he said when asked about his job security.

"If you want to talk about football, talk to me. If you want to talk about the future, talk to the Federation."

(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Sudipto Ganguly and Mike Collett)