“It was unpleasant, unlike anything I have ever experienced. You’re waiting on the alerts, hanging on your phone. You get a message saying don’t leave home, another when the risk has dropped. Stay in safe areas, indoors, away from glass. Most of the bombs fell where the US bases are so you felt more or less safe away from there, but your family is saying: ‘Come back.’ First, you can’t: for 10, 15 days the airspace was shut. Then I didn’t think it was right. When the airspace opened and my wife went back, I stayed. I had a responsibility to be there. It’s not being a hero or anything; it’s that I felt that was our duty, what I had to do.” Lopetegui told The Guardian in an interview.

Post march, the world number 54 side played friendlies against Ireland, which they lost 0-1, and drew 0-0 against El Salvador in their preparations for the World Cup. The Hassan Al-Haydos led coached side had arrived in Los Angeles last month to prepare ahead of the World Cup and the team had been training there since the last few days. The team, which also has the presence of Indian-origin footballer Tahsin Mohammad Jamshid in their ranks, will hope to start the tournament with a win against Switzerland. In the 2022 World Cup, Qatar had lost in all three Group A matches with a 2-0 loss against Ecuador, a 3-1 loss against Senegal and a 2-0 loss against Netherlands. Lopetegui had joined the team as head coach last year and the 59-year-old coach talked about how the team was motivated to play in this World Cup through quaffing and how wins over Iran and UAE meant a lot to the team. “We came for two main reasons: to take on a huge challenge no one had done (Qatar qualified through qualification for the first time) and to test ourselves in a very different context. And, of course, there was that feeling, the hope of being at a World Cup, which we could have had with another national team. We could have gone out straight away against Iran, the Brazil of [the region], but we won 1-0, which gave us time for Emirates [UAE] and Oman. We had to see what we could do, not what we wanted to do. You’re used to different players, intensity, qualities. That was an important shock for us when we started. Qatar is a country of 300,000 people; maybe 10,000 play. Against us, the Emirates had maybe one starter who was from the Emirates: the rest were Brazilians, Portuguese, Poles … we beat them. You have to improve quality, but maintain that essence,” added the coach.

With Qatar having the Qatar Stars League, where most of the current national team players play, the coach also talked about the importance of such a league apart from how playing in qualifiers as well as friendlies made the team realise the reality. “The biggest difference we found was in the level of competitiveness, the pace, the games they’re playing. We’re maybe the only national team (here) with lots of players who have only played four, five times this year. Our league has a lot of foreigners so there are 19, 20, 21-year-old players not getting the opportunity. The goalkeepers are all Qatari so often it’s as little as two outfield players,” said the coach.

The head coach also talked about how the planned friendlies against Serbia and Argentina would have helped the team. “Those games would have been useful, especially to define our game plans. We had to make do with sessions among ourselves and there were three weeks when players couldn’t train at all because they weren’t allowed to leave home. The physical preparation wasn’t ideal,” said Lopetegui.