If the program burnishes Qatar’s national brand, that is all to the good. Bleicher readily acknowledges that all Aspire players sign a contract that includes a strict image-rights provision so that “if a player gets really good, we can freely use his picture.”

But the ethics of this process, as well as the logistics involved, remain murkier. Elmar Keutgen, who was the mayor of Eupen in 2012, said he and other residents had significant concerns about the Qataris’ purchase of the club. Yes, K.A.S. Eupen was on the verge of insolvency, Keutgen said, but that did not mean he and others were comfortable becoming the Qataris’ washing machine in an operation intended to launder African players into Europe.

While many Africans do play in European leagues, the calculated nature of the Qataris’ plan — and the rigidness with which they controlled the young players’ futures — gave Keutgen and others some pause.

“I was very careful at the beginning because obviously the reaction from the locals was a concern,” said Keutgen, a practicing physician. “Are they treating these players like objects, or even animals? Are they trying to breed football players? People were worried.”

According to Bleicher, the idea of owning a club emerged in 2010, when he and Josep Colomer, the director of Aspire Football Dreams, realized that their first class of African players, whom they had been training since they were 13, would soon need to leave academy life and begin professional careers. Instead of simply letting the players go, Bleicher and Colomer wanted a way to continue having a hand in — or control over — the players’ development.

Bleicher, who had previously worked on Germany’s Olympics program, and Colomer, a former youth scout for Barcelona, knew that Europe was full of struggling clubs looking for angel owners.

The executives quickly discarded England, Spain, France and Italy as options because each country had restrictive rules about how many non-European players could be on a team’s roster. In the end, Bleicher said, the choice was between Portugal and Belgium. Since many of the African players spoke French, Belgium seemed a better fit, particularly in light of the country’s residency requirements: After three years of residency in Belgium, a person can apply for a Belgian passport and become a dual citizen. (Other countries, such as France, require five years of residency or more.)