I personally find the approach to be short sighted as it will potentially disenfranchise local national players who may feel like their opportunities are been taken away to accommodate others who have a financial but not emotional tie to the country.
Basically football mercenaries.
Qatar has serious money (and this is when compared to other Middle East Oil rich countries) and can effectively buy what it wants. But does this make it right?
I would be quite happy for a quote system to be introduced similar to what clubs do to make sure local players are given a chance. e,g. 85% of your squad must be born within the nation they represent or something similar. (unless they have parents who were born in the country)
I get what you're saying, dude - it would be a farce for a country to be allowed by FIFA to recruit too many players from overseas to fill their national team when they only have a tenuous connection to that country. Qatar, though is in an unusual situation.
Many countries these days, including NZ, rely a lot on immigrants to boost their population and bring in skills and money, as the USA have always done. Here in Aotearoa about 23% of our population were born overseas. In Britain it's 11.3% and increasing fast, in the USA 13%.
However, Qatar has the highest foreign born population percentage in the world and so allowances should perhaps be made - they rely on foreign workers to do virtually everything except rule the country (and that will happen in time): 85% of the population are foreign born!!!
"With a small citizen population of fewer than 250,000 people [of the 1.9 million total population] foreign workers outnumber native Qataris. Foreign expatriates come mainly from other Arab nations (20% of population), the Indian subcontinent (India 24.5%, Nepal 13%, Pakistan 7%, Sri Lanka 5%), Southeast Asia (Philippines10%), and other countries (5%)"
By the way, the example you mention of Tommy Smith as an All White recruited from overseas is not in fact so clear-cut. He immigrated here as an eight year-old in 1998, and played his junior football here until he returned to Britain to pursue a career at age 16 in 2006. He had residency here from age eight, and although his parents moved briefly back to Britain with Tommy to support him, they and his siblings now continue to live here.
Tommy on the BBC Sport website: "“I owe a lot of my football education to New Zealand, and I have a loyalty to them - if I didn't feel anything towards New Zealand I wouldn't have done this.”
Big Pete 65, Christchurch
COYN 