Qatar U23

Al-Annabi came away from Doha with the biggest medal available to them, beating Iraq 1–0 in the final of the 2006 Asian Games to take gold on home soil. Two years later they added the first AGCFF U-23 Gulf Cup and held onto it in 2010.

The team traces back to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, where it reached the quarter-finals before the age-group competition it now plays had settled into its current shape; it only started entering the Asian Games proper once that tournament shifted to an under-23 format in 2002, and it did not appear at the AFC U-23 Asian Cup until the event launched in 2016. That tournament has been trickier terrain than the Gulf Cup or the Asian Games — a quarter-final in 2020 remains the best they have managed, including on home ground in the 2024 edition, when Ilídio Vale had charge of the squad.

Gold returned in 2023, when the side won the Asian Games under Hwang Sun-hong's fellow countryman Hang Joo-young. Some of the 2024 group, among them Jassem Gaber and Mostafa Meshaal, have since been pulled into the senior set-up.

Regional company remains the constant. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Iraq turn up again and again in the same Gulf and Asian brackets, and it is against that same handful of neighbours, rather than any one named rival, that Qatar's under-23s keep measuring themselves.