For more than a decade, football fans have been wondering what the first Middle Eastern World Cup would look like. Now that the tournament has passed its halfway mark, we can finally see it in practice. Morocco’s now the last Arab and African team standing. After their win against Spain, players posed with the Palestinian flag, highlighting an issue that’s become central to fans at the tournament. In this episode, we see how the 2022 Qatar World Cup has panned out so far, from upsets to football culture to geopolitics. 

In this episode: 

• Tony Karon (@TonyKaron), editorial lead at AJ+
• Abubakr Al-Shamahi (@ShamahiAbubakr), Al Jazeera digital editor for the Middle East and North Africa 

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Negin Owliaei with Chloe K. Li and our host, Halla Moheiddeen. Ruby Zaman fact-checked this episode.

Our production team includes Chloe K. Li, Alexandra Locke, Ashish Malhotra, Negin Owliaei, Amy Walters, and Ruby Zaman. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou Gad are our engagement producers. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.

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