Can the Qatar under-23 football team go all the way in the Asian championship, and in the process qualify for this year’s Olympic Games in Rio?
This is probably the question on every Qatar football fan’s mind after the team smashed their way into the quarter-finals of the event by winning all their three Group A matches, and too against fancied opposition.
Yesterday, the Abdelkarim Hassan-led outfit raised expectations by defeating Syria 4-2 to top the group, after having earlier disposed of China and Iran with some degree of comfort.
Coached by Spaniard Felix Sanchez, the team had prepared hard for the tournament, and it was evident in the way they responded to the task on hand, playing attacking football and dominating their rivals for long periods.
Captain Hassan and forward Ahmed Alaaeldin  have been outstanding so far, scoring at crucial times and laying the foundations for the team’s success so far which gains added importance because several players who are just about 20 or so can expect to be at the peak of their careers when the World Cup is held in Qatar a little over six years from now.
Qatar have never played in the World Cup finals so far, but their campaign for Russia 2018 appears to be on track after they topped their group and made the cut for the final qualifying phase from Asia.
If the under-23 team manages to qualify for the Rio Olympics, it would be enough motivation for the seniors to put their best foot forward, as it were, and clinch a World Cup berth in Russia. If that is indeed the case, it would be a case of double delight for football fans in Qatar.

Coe’s woe

IAAF President Sebastian Coe must act immediately as words alone are no longer enough in the required full overhaul of the battered ruling athletics body IAAF.
Coe, 59, was in attendance in Munich when he escaped a damning verdict from a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) commission with bruises, as he — to the surprise of many — was thrown a lifeline by its chairman Richard Pound.
The commission said Thursday that a group including former president Lamine Diack, his two sons, and his legal counsel formed a corrupt inner circle with the IAAF which extorted money from athletes to cover up failed doping tests.
The report said “corruption was embedded in the organisation,” and that the decision-making IAAF council “could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in athletics and the non-enforcement of applicable anti-doping rules” and “the level of nepotism that operated within the IAAF.”
Coe was a council member since 2003 and on it as vice-president between 2007 and 2015 before succeeding Diack as president.
But despite it all Pound said at the news conference Thursday in Munich: “There’s no way Coe could have known the extent of what Diack was up to.” He also insisted he couldn’t “think of anyone better than Coe to lead” the way to reform.
Coe was elected IAAF chief amid much hype but the revelations of massive corruption in the game have put a big question mark over his ability to bring in reforms and restore the credibility of athletics. How he goes about the business remains to be seen.