These questions all get to the heart of Qatar’s soccer problem, which in reality may be one of simple demographics. Qatar has “maybe 300,000” citizens, Milutinovic noted, and only a few thousand of them are licensed soccer players. And no amount of money, which oil- and gas-rich Qatar has in abundance, seems to be able to create more of them fast enough.

The Pundits

A short drive from one of Qatar’s air-conditioned soccer stadiums, deep inside a warren of corridors and TV studios, 10 men, all but one wearing Qatari traditional dress, sat on white cushions placed along a wall.

They represented the great and good of Qatari soccer — former players, coaches and newspaper editors — and they were preparing to argue long into the night. This was the set of “Al Majlis,” a soccer talk show on the Al Kass network. The program is one of the most popular sports shows in the Middle East, and on this night there was much to discuss after a particularly bad-tempered local match.

“Everyone was tweeting, wait to see what they say on ‘Al Majlis,’” Abdulaziz Breida, a young producer for the show, said in the darkened control room as his editor shouted camera instructions in Arabic. He was planning for a late night. “We might not finish until 2 or 3 in the morning,” Breida said.