SCOTLAND look set to face controversial World Cup 2022 hosts Qatar in a home friendly ahead of the crucial Euro 2016 showdown in Ireland.
SFA chief executive Stewart Regan, president Campbell Ogilvie and vice-president Rod Petrie recently visited Doha on a fact-finding mission and agreed to establish a partnership between the two associations.
Now Qatar boss - former Spurs star - Djamel Belmadi has revealed they are close to agreeing a date to face the Scots, after they confirmed a match against Northern Ireland on May 31, likely to be played in England.
He said: "We have a camp in the United Kingdom in May and June.
"At the moment, we are finalising our second game which will be against Scotland, after we have played Northern Ireland. They will be good preparation for our World Cup qualifiers."
Scots boss Gordon Strachan said at the weekend he wanted one friendly ahead of what is set to be a crucial European Championship qualifier in Dublin on June 13.
Following that SFA trip to Qatar last month, Ogilvie said: "Qatari football is progressing and we hope to work together in the future."
Qatar are currently ranked 109th in the FIFA Rankings, but have huge ambitions to be contenders for the World Cup by the time they host it in seven years time.
However, they have struggled recently and lost all three Asian Cup games in Australia this year, to United Arab Emirates, Iran and to Bahrain.
Scotland have never played Qatar, but they do have one link, they were once managed by a Scot - the late Hearts and Spurs legend Dave Mackay was in charge in 1994 for a year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article