Mate i agree with you. I believe they can progress from the group. Qatar's biggest problem is not playing competitive internationals for the past few years. At the Asian Cup in 2019 (their last real matches) they played 4 of the 5 other Asian representatives at this World Cup..... and beat all four of them. They also beat the host(UAE) and ended up winning the trophy. At the Asian Cup Qatar were not favorites or even in the mix of contenders. Pre tournament they were probably 7th favourite to win the Cup. Contrary to some teams who are having bad preperations ie Canada and Iran, I think Qatar will have an excellent preperation and will give a very good account of themselves when it matters later this year. Think back to the last World Cup when nobody gave Russia a chance to win a match let alone make it to the knock out phase. Good luck to them i hope they do their country proud. The biggest danger Ecuador and Senegal have is taking Qatar for granted.
Strange thing with Qatar. They won the AFC Asian cup, they played pretty well at the last Gold cup, and they played friendlies in the Portugal/Serbia WC qualifying group, and played decent the first round against each team showing some decent play. Then out of seemingly nowhere, when the second round started against the UEFA teams, they completely fell apart and have looked like minnows ever since. Maybe someone may know what happened?
First sentence could happen... second is impossible. Do you know Brazil and Argentina? You could have their u-10s play each other and there'd still be an even bet on the game ending in a scuffle Same question as @Nani_17 : did Qatar really peak 3 years ago?
Probably is a good answer. We can't be sure, but the tea-leaves suggest Qatar peaked in 2019-20 period and then began to noticeably decline in 2021-22. Still, I expect them to put a credible showing as hosts, even if I don't expect them to advance from their group.
At this point, I kinda doubt they'll be able to win a game without some Byron Moreno-type shenanigans.
That is a good point. I was thinking they could bury the hatch for day to give the middle finger to FIFA. But that would also screw over the fans who pay to attend the game. Would a red card, or culmative yellows in qualify rule out a player for the first WC game? If so, I doubt we see any starters play.
I want to say that a straight red would (see: Chilavert in 2002). Don't know about the other cases...
Qatar seems to have been using the same 14, 15 players since the 2019 Asian Cup. Winning the tournament seems to have given them the justification for using the same team and squeeze out every bit of usefulness out of that small group of players in the tournaments going forward. It has also turned their national team into something of a closed shop. They seem to be throwing everything they have at the national team to the detriment of their youth national teams and clubs. You may notice a marked decline of these teams in other competitions during the post-2019 period. Players like Almoez Ali who impressed in 2019 look wasteful and one dimensional, yet they know that barring injuries, they are virtually guaranteed a place in the starting XI for the World Cup.
Iran's defensive midfielder Saeed Ezatollahi, at the time a key player for Iran, received a red card early in the 2nd half of our away match against S.Korea in the 2018 WCQ (in a meaningless game for Iran since we had already clinched first place in our group). He received a 2 game suspension. He served the first missing our last WCQ against Syria but the 2nd left him suspended for our opening game against Morocco in WC-18. So, yes, red cards in any WCQ between Brazil-Argentina would certainly carry into the World Cup, at a minimum suspending the player for the first 2 games.
Now that we have qualified for the World Cup it seems we will still waste the September window playing a centenary game against New Zealand.
That is absolutely correct. Their squad saw very very few new additions since ever they won the Asian Cup. Hence one could conclude that they haven't been motivated to give it their all and play at their best level in friendlies because of the lack of competitiveness inside the squad. That's why I believe we should judge Qatar exclusively by their results in the Asian Cup, Copa America, Gold Cup and to a lesser extent Arab Cup. I don't think they'll get outclassed and humilated on home soil. If they play to the level we saw in all these tournaments they will have a decent campaign. Maybe not enough to make the knockouts but why not beat Ecuador? Without any disrespect to Ecuador I believe Qatar really couldn't have asked for a better opponent to get things rolling.
Qatar beat Ecuador 4-2 in a friendly match a couple of years ago btw. I think they could win that. Lose that one however, and they're in real trouble...
At least at the Gold Cup what people saw was a reasonably decent attack, but a weak defense and a real huge problem with lack of depth (they tended to run out of gas repeatedly late in games and gave up most of their goals in that Gold Cup in 2nd halves). Just checked, yep, they gave up all 6 of their goals in the 2nd halves of Gold Cup games, they did score 12 in the tournament (3 vs Panama, 4 vs Grenada, 2 vs Honduras, 3 vs El Salvador, 0 vs USA) overall and evenly split them in each half (although all save one were 62nd minute or earlier). They might surprise but it really depends on whether they can rediscover their Asian Cup form, and whether they've addressed the depth issues that made them look prone to late game collapses during the Gold Cup. I'm betting on "nope", Netherlands are Netherlands, and Senegal have looked defensively stout, and just barely good enough in the attack for the past five years or so, Ecuador is real hit and miss but they are athletic and fast and physical....I have a hard time seeing it, it helps that they get Ecuador first, maybe they can use that home crowd opener momentum to steal points.
I have to assume, given the stakes and resources ($) available to them, by the time of the World Cup, Qatar will have addressed those issues that can be addressed with proper analysis, training and preparation. Otherwise, I agree that there are clear indications of a precipitous drop in form by Qatar. The fact that their clubs in the AFC CL have also not appeared as well in the past couple of AFC CL editions adds to that perception.
Actually two games. We play New Zealand in Brisbane on Sept 22 with a return fixture in Auckland on Sept 25. I'm not sure how this prepares us for France, Denmark and Tunisia. I suspect our federation didn't think we would qualify when they signed the contracts. With a player release for the world cup only 7 days before the tournament starts (8 days before we play France) there may be time for one training friendly against another qualified team in Qatar.
CAF has supposedly postponed Septembers AFCON qualifying matches, to me moved to a later date in an effort to help the 5 WC qualified teams to prepare for the world cup in Qatar. The African teams will now all be available for friendly matches, although they are pretty slim pickings. Seems both Brazil and Argentina are free though, as well as South Korea, Chile, Canada.
Only if you're willing to travel to South America: Brazil and Argentina have to play their postponed WCQ in São Paulo, so the friendly they schedule in the same September window will have to be over there.
Argentina has nothing scheduled but IMO, knowing how the coach sees this preparation and if he's indeed forced to play Brazil, he will schedule some trash friendly at home against Bolivia or some weak Concacaf team to have a glorified training session. No facks given, he just wants to fast forward to November.
IIRC that would be the first African MNT to play in South America since Nigeria visited Peru for a friendly a few years back.
Looks like that game was played all the way back in 2012: https://www.11v11.com/matches/peru-v-nigeria-23-may-2012-303079/ If there haven't been other friendlies since, then the last time an African MNT played in South America was at WC 2014 (Algeria-Germany?).