A month before the first match, Qatar fired head coach Carlos Queiroz, handing the job to Tintin Marquez. Now, Qatar are not only the first team to qualify from the group stage. They have also entered the knockout stage as group winners (they will only have to play one of the third-placed teams, who will advance via a play-off). Striker Akram Afif declared after two wins and no goals conceded: "Our best form is still ahead of us." Chances are... it will be!
Qatar is not only the host, but also the defending champion of the Asian Cup. Qatar's victim in the final of the 2019 Asian Cup was Japan - the team that the betting market rated as the number 1 candidate for the championship this time. The score in the 2019 final was 3-1 in favor of Qatar, and the players who scored in that match - Afif, Abdulaziz Hatem, Almoez Ali - are all present in this year's tournament. They have played for the national team a total of more than 300 times, although their average age is less than 30. Afif and Ali were the authors of all 4 goals in the 2 recent victories over Lebanon and Tajikistan.
Qatar (middle) is highly rated at this year's tournament.
When it comes to Qatari football, everyone knows: They have the Aspire Academy, founded exactly 20 years ago. A team consisting entirely of players trained by Aspire won the U.19 Asian Championship in 2014. That same force won the 2019 Asian Cup and is the backbone of Qatar in this year's tournament. The superiority is too obvious: In recent days, no team has been better than Qatar in terms of understanding in the way they play on the field. Tintin Marquez has only been in charge for 1 month? Yes, but he has been associated with Qatari football for many years, and he used to be the coach of... Aspire Academy. Even Carlos Queiroz, who coached MU, Real Madrid, and many times led teams from Iran and Portugal, is not as suitable to lead Qatar as Coach Marquez!
Of course, no one has forgotten the disappointment of Qatar at the 2022 World Cup. The main reason is that the pressure is too great. The 2019 Asian Cup championship led to expectations higher than the actual ability of this small football country. On the other hand, the World Cup is too diverse in terms of schools. Right from the first match, Qatar stumbled against Ecuador, which is only an average - weak representative of South American football. Then they lost to Senegal and the Netherlands. Now it is a different story. Asian football is simpler and Qatar immediately showed its own identity in the first two matches.
Without big stars like Son Heung-min (Korea) or Takumi Minamino, Wataru Endo (Japan), but Qatar is a very even team in terms of individual quality and has a technical playing style, reminiscent of tiki-taka. Combined with the understanding due to being so close together as mentioned, this is truly a championship candidate. Qatar's real ability is higher than the performance of... betting prices. In other words, Qatar in the Asian playground, very "just right", will play football much easier than they do in the "big sea" of the World Cup.
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