MELBOURNE, Australia — With so little to cheer in their nation’s brief soccer history, fans of East Timor’s national team would be correct to consider this the squad’s golden era. East Timor, which did not play a World Cup qualifying match until 2007 and did not win one until this year, has advanced to the second round of World Cup qualifying for the first time.

Under normal circumstances, the team would be warmly received when it assembles in Dili, the capital, next week for its next two matches. But instead of cheering, infuriated fans in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony off Australia’s north coast, are raising questions about how the team was put together: Apparently the national federation went on a shopping spree for players in the world’s richest marketplace — Brazil — and came back with more than enough to reshape its team.

While clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid can use players from around the world, national teams — those that compete in the World Cup — are limited to native players, or players who qualify as citizens because of a direct link to the country. East Timor has seemingly ignored this distinction.

Over the past several years, East Timor has naturalized more than a dozen Brazilian-born players, to the dismay of those who note that few, if any, have ties to the island nation. The new players have unquestionably improved East Timor’s soccer fortunes; seven started a recent match for the national team, which sat near the bottom of the FIFA world rankings in 2012 but had climbed 60 places by June.