In a country where there is a true love for football, an early and humiliating elimination in the group stage of the World Cup, which it was "lucky" to host, was a real depressing and cause for days of mourning.
Zero points from three games and just one goal was the meager output produced by Qatar's players this month, but at the Emirates it was mostly met with shrugs and yawns.
That is not what they gathered for.
Success on the pitch was not the goal of hosting the FIFA World Cup, which has been marred by countless scandals since the day Qatar was announced as the host in 2010.
The small Emirate in the Gulf has no sports culture, so it had to, according to a report in the New York Times, "import" fans from Lebanon to cheer it on with all their might.
Qatar has never qualified for the World Cup, and some of its players are foreigners who received the coveted Qatari passport for their limited skills.
This is in contrast to the millions of foreign workers living in Qatar, who make up the majority of its population without having the same status as its 300,000 citizens.
Protest by the players of the German national team (Photo: Reuters)
Qatar's achievement, which in the eyes of others is a moral and sporting failure, is its success in organizing an event of this magnitude from scratch, and without any sporting background.
It built state-of-the-art and magnificent stadiums - with the blood, sweat and tears of many workers - and attracted fans from all over the world, without giving up anything.
FIFA aligned with its decisions to ban the sale of alcohol in the stands and show support for the LGBT community with pride flags, while Qatar allowed pro-Palestinian flags to be flown during the games.
Apart from some sporadic protests, which did not change anything, the order written by the conservative Qatar remained intact.
Even Germany, whose players dared to make a brief gesture of gagging at the start of one of their games, did not let the Qatari oppression get in their way.
This week, a major agreement was signed between German companies and Qatar for the supply of gas for 15 years, despite all the criticisms recently voiced by senior officials in Berlin about the principality's attitude towards the gay community and the exploitation of foreign workers.
In Germany, this will be due to the need to look for alternative sources of energy to those from Russia, a common Western argument these days designed to whitewash dubious deals with despotic regimes around the world.
Confrontation between fans of the Iranian national team and the Qatar police (Paz Hasdai, we sent to Qatar)
Qatar, one of the largest gas exporters in the world, is enjoying the great demand for its resources in light of the war in Ukraine.
Before the agreement with Germany, Doha managed to sign another huge deal, with China, for 17 years - the longest gas supply agreement in history.
In doing so, Qatar signaled to the West that even if they consider boycotting it due to the human rights violations in its territory, it has enough suitors who will not feel any twinges of conscience and will not interfere in what is going on in its territory.
Qatar can be calm.
The feelings of guilt in the West, which in any case were not powerful enough to influence the holding of the World Cup even though everything was known for years, will soon be forgotten in favor of lowering energy prices.
It is not for nothing that the chairman of the organizing committee of the games in Qatar allowed himself to admit this week that between 400 and 500 workers were killed at the construction sites of the stadiums, after the Emirates vigorously denied for a long time the very existence of the phenomenon. No one will take the tournament from them anymore, and the admission is hard to beat Waves in a world that is easily bored and addicted to searching for the next sensational story.
The Central Stadium in Qatar (Photo: GettyImages, David Ramos)
And so, despite the team's historic failure on the field - the first host ever to be kicked out of the tournament after just two games - Qatar is the tournament's big winner.
The Al-Thani royal family, whose last two leaders promoted the hosting of the World Cup and implemented it, received a stamp on the high international status that it established within a few decades.
Just two years ago, it was still subject to a boycott by its neighbors, led by the heir of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who now looks at it with envy and himself dreams of hosting a World Cup in the future.
If no unusual incidents occur until the end of the World Cup, and the chance of them is small following Iran's rejection, it will be defined as a success in terms of its conduct and the quality of its facilities.
Some of them may undergo a change of purpose towards the next goal marked by the ambitious princess - hosting the 2032 Olympic Games. It is possible that the Olympic Committee will refrain from following FIFA and choosing such a controversial host, but Qatar has in abundance what in many cases tips the scales - inexhaustible capital , with whose help it became a regional power with international influence.
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Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani