National coach Louis van Gaal knows for sure: this Dutch national team has ‘a great chance of becoming world champions’. To achieve that goal, the group must first be survived. In it, the the Dutch will play against Senegal, Ecuador and Qatar. Football zone looks ahead to the group matches and now introduces Qatar, the host country that wanted to present itself well at a World Cup through months of mysterious preparation.
At the insistence of Félix Sánchez, the national coach of Qatar, the national league was already deprived of its star players in June in order to start a months-long run-up to the World Cup. Getting used to each other, sharpening patterns and expertly analyzing opponents, these were the goals during the more than five months in which the Qatari national team was in training camp. By means of the necessary practice games, Sánchez thought he could prepare his team and, perhaps more importantly, throw sand in the eyes of opponents.
There is a lot of uncertainty about those friendly matches. Doha, Marbella, Austria: these are all locations where they practice in the deepest secrecy against well-known and lesser-known opponents. From research by the NOS it turns out that Qatar has played no less than 26 exhibition games to prepare for the World Cup, but no results are known for four of those games, for example. A data company like StatsPerform has even only thirteen of the 26 exhibition games in the system, simply because nothing comes out about the doings of the Qatari national team.
The matches were played behind closed doors, images of the duels were not allowed to be distributed and opponents were presented with contracts that clearly stated that no details about the friendly matches could be leaked. That says Jakub Mihálik, marketing manager of FC Samorín from the Slovak second division, against the NOS. His club played an exhibition game against Qatar. “We were asked not to broadcast or record anything ourselves. Afterwards we could get some images of them, because they had brought all kinds of cameras. Four pieces. There were also two people walking around filming with drones.”
A representative of the Federation of Albania, a country that also practiced against Qatar, was also asked about his experience. He noted that the host country acted mysteriously to leak as little tactical information as possible for upcoming opponents at the World Cup, including the the Dutch. Albania, and probably the other opponents as well, meanwhile received compensation for keeping everything quiet and thus cooperating with the Qatari plans. Partly because of this, the KNVB reportedly only has thirteen recent matches of Sánchez’s formation available.
The Ecuadorians are too strong for Qatar
For the Dutch, however, these problems can still be overseen. The Netherlands will play the last group game against Qatar and has therefore already seen and assessed two of the country’s matches, against Ecuador and Senegal. In the opening game of the tournament, the hosts of the tournament already lost 2-0 and did not make a great impression. Nevertheless, it is important not to underestimate Qatar. At recent major tournaments, the team made a good impression and even won medals.
The Asian Football Championship, traditionally heavily occupied by countries such as Japan, South Korea, Iran and Australia, was won in a very convincing manner by Qatar in 2019. In the final, the Japanese were defeated 3-1, while other superpowers had already bitten the team of Sánchez. In addition, Qatar was invited in 2021 to participate in the Gold Cup, the championship for countries from North and Central America and the Caribbean. There, Qatar was only eliminated in the semi-finals by the United States: 1-0. A failure in their own country does not fit in that vein at all and so the the Dutch can expect a Qatar that will do everything it can to not finish the World Cup scoreless.