January 20 – Qatar’s disastrous Asian Cup campaign is exactly the opposite of what they expected both in terms of maintaining progress on the field and also in sending out a message to those who oppose the World Cup going to the Gulf state in 2022.
Qatar went into Asia’s blue riband tournament with high hopes after their unexpected Gulf Cup triumph success in November and, a year ago, the West Asian Football Federation Championship. They had lost only once in 17 internationals but failure to advance beyond the group stage after three defeats, the latest at the hands of underdogs Bahrain, will reverberate across the country.
Qatar’s usual response to such setbacks is to fire the coach and that seems likely again. Algerian Djamel Belmadi was charged with building a squad capable of competing for the 2018 World Cup and on home soil four years later but reports in the Gulf suggests he will shortly be on his way.
Belmadi became Qatar’s tenth appointment in 11 years when the former Marseille, Manchester City and Southampton player took over 10 months ago. “If you want to talk about football, talk to me. If you want to talk about the future, talk to the Federation,” he told reporters.
“We wanted to win a game here at least, we came with a lot of expectation, we lost all three so obviously, we are very disappointed. We had three competitions this year, we won two of them. I’m not sure the Asian Cup performance is about our level, maybe it is too much for us to play too many competitions in one year.”
With an eye on the future, he brought a young squad to Australia with only one of his 23 over the age of 30. “If we work well with this squad we can have a future. There are many things we need to fix in our country and with our league, our federation, to give a chance to these players to improve.
“We didn’t come here for experience, we wanted to qualify for the second stage. I still believe in this group. They have quality and if we take care of them, we can have a better team for the next qualification for the World Cup.”
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