JAKARTA - The opening match of the 2022 World Cup will be held on Sunday 20 November evening WIB featuring Qatar vs Ecuador at Al Bayt Stadium. For Qatar, this match is not just an opening, but proof that they are the hosts.
Being in Group A, Qatar does not want to be just a complement. Felix Sanchez's team wanted to prove that they could put up a fierce fight against the other three teams, namely Ecuador, the Netherlands and Senegal.
Qatar's first proof will be tested against La Tricolor. The South American team has more qualified player quality based on notes on paper.
From the FIFA rankings, Ecuador is in 44th place while Qatar is in 50th position. For Ecuador, handled by Gustavo Alfaro, this is an opportunity that returns after their last appearance at the 2014 World Cup.
Ecuador has qualified for the World Cup finals three times. They definitely want to repeat or even exceed the 2006 World Cup achievements when qualifying for the last 16.
Different from Ecuador, for Qatar, this will be the atmosphere of the World Cup arena for the first time in their history. Despite being the first experience of appearing on the four-year grand agenda, Qatar has a slick record of Ecuador outside of this agenda.
Felix Sanchez's team managed to win over Ecuador with a score of 4-3 in the meeting in October 2018. That way, of course, there is hope for Qatar to beat Ecuador in the opening match.
Moreover, if you look at the last five matches of the two teams, Qatar's performance is also much better than La Tricolor's troops. Al-Annabi won four consecutive wins in the period October to November by crushing Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Albania. They only drew once, namely when they were detained 2-2 by Chile last September.
Meanwhile, Gustavo Alvaro's side were only able to win one win, namely last June when they won 1-0 over Cabo Verde. The rest, they drew without goals against Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Iraq.
Seeing this, Qatar clearly had a great chance of making a surprise by defeating Ecuador in the opening match of the 2022 World Cup. If they manage to get the full three points in the first match, it will certainly increase the hosts' confidence to play the next two group stage parties.
In the opening match later, the Qatari squad will be filled with players who will be at local clubs such as the captain, Hassan Al-Haydos and the mainstay duo up front, namely, Almoez Ali and Akram Afif. They certainly already know each other's games but unfortunately they lack experience in playing international events.
While the Ecuadorian squad will instead be filled with players who strengthen big teams in Europe and America, where their names are quite familiar to world football lovers. Some of them are Piero Hincapie of Bayer Leverkusen, Enner Valencia of Fenerbahce who has long defended West Ham United, Carlos Gruezo of Augsburg and Gonzalo Plata of Real Valladolid and there are three champions Brighton and Hove Albion, Moises Caicedo, Pervis Estupinan and Jeremy Sarmiento.
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