They come from more than 8,000 miles away, but Qatar’s National Soccer Team has generated a fan base in Santa Barbara as they make final preparations before playing in the FIFA World Cup.
A group of 5th and 6th-grade students from Franklin Elementary School and members of the Santa Barbara High boys soccer team became fans after watching Qatar’s players go through a training session at Westmont College’s Thorrington Field on Thursday morning.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the players handed out team scarves and jerseys as well as signed autographs and posed for photos with the kids of teachers Fernando Rodriguez, Ricardo Alcaraz and Pedro Guillen.
Qatar have made Westmont their home base to prepare for their group-play matches in the June 11-July 19 tournament that’s being hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
The Maroons (the team’s nickname), who were drawn into Group B, play their first game against Switzerland at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on June 13; they’ll return to Westmont and train for their second match against Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia on June 18, and come back one more time to get ready for their final group match against Bosnia & Herzegovina in Seattle on June 24.
Going by the latest FIFA World Rankings, that final match looks like Qatar’s best chance of getting a win and possibly advancing out of the group for the first time in their history. They are ranked 55th while Bosnia & Herzegovina comes in at 64th; Switzerland is No. 20 and Canada No. 30.
Qatar failed to advance in the World Cup they hosted in 2022, losing all three matches against Ecuador, Senegal and the Netherlands. As the host, they had an automatic qualification.
Qatar’s Spanish coach Julen Lopetegui feels the team’s mentality is better this time around, “because we earned the right to be here.” The team was one of eight qualifiers out of the Asian Football Confederation, joining Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, South Korea and Uzbekistan.
“We have to enjoy it for that,” he said of qualifying, “but enjoying doesn’t mean to accept that’s okay. We have the right to fight, the right to defend our place here and the admission and the sentiment to be competitive. That is something we want to do. We know it’s going to be difficult, but it’s our goal.”
Lopetegui was all smiles as he and his players interacted with the kids after the training session.
“We’re very, very happy they are here,” he said. “We have to take care of the fans, all the kids, they are the future of football.”
Lopetegui is a battle-tested coach. His experience includes guiding Spain’s Men’s National Team, Spanish club giant Real Madrid, Sevilla, Portuguese power Porto and English clubs Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Ham United.
Unlike most World Cup teams, whose rosters are filled with standouts who play their club football all over the world, Lopetegui’s Qatari squad is homegrown, the players competing in the country’s Stars League. Their star player is wild-haired winger Akram Afif, a two-time Asian Footballer of the Year.
The Maroons arrived in Santa Barbara after a 1-0 loss to Ireland in a friendly match last Thursday in Dublin. Lopetegui said Ireland was a physical opponent and he expects that and more from Switzerland in the World Cup opener.
“Switzerland is going to be different, more complex, more technical,” he said.
The team has one more preparation game on Saturday in Los Angeles against El Salvador.
Jeff Raymond, an associate athletic director at Westmont, said representatives of four to five national soccer teams checked out Westmont last fall as a possible training site for the World Cup, and “Qatar was actually not one of them. They came after the draw.”
With all their group games scheduled on the West Coast, Qatar officials picked Westmont as their home base.
The college is no stranger to hosting big soccer teams. In 2023, the U.S. Women’s National Team trained at Westmont before that year’s World Cup in Australia. In 2025, Brazil club team Botafogo used Thorrington Field for 10 days during the FIFA Club World Cup.
“That was our first direct relationship with FIFA,” said Raymond of the Botafogo visit.
Also, the expansion Colorado pro women’s soccer team of the NWSL had its preseason camp at Westmont in January of this year, and the MLS New York Football Club trained there before the start of the 2020 season.
To make the team feel at home, Qatar officials provided maroon-colored signage with inspiring messages around the Thorrington Field: “We Are One… We Are Qatar” and “Qatar Stands Behind You.”
The football federation also paid to improve an already beautiful pitch using a process called synthetic stitching. A specialized machine stitches millions of synthetic fibers into the soil, and the natural grass roots entangle with the threads to reinforce the roots and create a more durable surface, meaning fewer deep divots.
“The benefit of the stitching is it helps the field hold up better,” said Raymond. “We already had a nice field. Now, it’ll be one of the nicer fields around. The company that did the process here, they were literally doing three competition fields for the World Cup after this.”
