Al-gharafa B

Al-Gharafa B sits in the Qatar Second Division, the tier where reserve sides of the top-flight clubs play out their fixtures alongside independent teams, and the record book has nothing to show for it: no title, no runners-up finish, nothing beyond a line in the fixture list. That is not unusual for a reserve outfit, but it draws a sharp line against the parent club's own start in that division, which it won at the first attempt in 1979-80 and three times more before moving up.

The team plays at the Suheim bin Hamad Stadium in Al Dafna, a 13,000-seat ground well short of the Thani bin Jassim Stadium the first team calls home, and wears the same yellow shirts and blue shorts the club adopted at its founding out of admiration for Brazil. The parent club itself was formed on 6 June 1979 as Al-Ittihad by Sheikh Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, joining the Qatar Football Association that September, and took the Al-Gharafa name only in 2004, when it was recast as the club of the Al-Gharafa district in Al Rayyan. The nickname that follows the B team into its own fixtures, Al Fuhud, belongs to that senior side, not to the reserves themselves.

Fixtures against reserve sides of Al-Sadd, Al-Arabi and Al-Rayyan carry the weight of Qatar's big-four rivalry even at this level, though the Qatar Derby label proper is reserved for Al-Sadd against Al-Arabi. Whatever the B team's own results, the name attached most firmly to Al-Gharafa remains a first-team one: Wesley Sneijder.