In the early hours of this morning, the World Cup group draw ceremony has ended, and Chat Ball Jun will also analyze the different situations encountered by the eight groups of the World Cup and different teams through a few days!
Today, let's talk about Group A: host Qatar, South American mystery ecuador, Africa Cup champion Senegal, and Europe's old powerhouse Netherlands!
1, Qatar: twelve years ago began to prepare, once lying flat?
Twelve years ago, on December 2, 2010, a few months after the end of the World Cup in South Africa, Qatar successfully won the right to host the World Cup, of course, the subsequent news was very unfavorable to Qatar, because in the bidding process, there was corruption in this World Cup, but the overall situation has been decided, and Qatar, which started building the stadium early, is ready to meet the fans of the world.
So, how strong is this team?
In order to train for the World Cup, Qatar, as an Asian team, joined the European World Preliminary Tournament, and the 5 teams with Serbia, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan were divided into Group A, of course, the match with Qatar will not be included in the final results of these five teams!
Qatar's Spanish manager
Felix Sanchez has coached the Barcelona youth team for a long time, and since 2014, he has taken over a new job to cultivate new talents for Qatar, he has been coaching the Qatar U19, U20, U21, U23 and other echelons for more than 2014-2020, and at the same time, from 2017 to the present, he has taken care of the manager of the Qatar national team.
Can you see that? Although Sanchez was not well-known in world football before coming to Qatar, Qatar has long determined that felix Sanchez as the core, from 2014, officially began to build a team, completely selected and taught by Sanchez, and now Qatari players, many of whom have been working with Sanchez for a long time when they were under 20 years old.
This is an important project for Qatar to enhance its strength.
If you look at the recent list of Qatari teams, you can also find an interesting phenomenon, in Qatar 25 or more internationals, more than 10 players have dual nationality, and many of them have traveled to Europe, if you look at their other nationality, you will find that most of these players also have an African nationality.
The national football team U23 has played against some players
On January 15, 2018, the national football team U23 once played an Asian Cup U23 group match with Qatar U23, and in the end, Qatar U23 player Moez scored two goals in a row to reverse the national football team U23.
At that time, Moez had become one of Qatar's most important top scorers, scoring nine goals at the 2019 Asian Cup, helping Qatar win the Asian Cup for the first time, and he also had Qatari citizenship, as well as Sudanese citizenship.
In 2021, Moez said something in an interview: he said that he and about 13 players in the national team, all from the same academy school, and their head coach is the Qatari coach Sanchez, who has been with the students of the Academy for about 15 years and has trained many internationals for Qatar.
That is to say, many players of this youth academy, not only to cultivate Qatari players, but also to find some foreign young people who can naturalize the "banknote ability" of real money and silver, so that the strength of the Qatar national team has improved significantly, before winning the 2019 Asian Cup, Qatar is in a long-term running position, and in 2015, it is the bottom of the Asian Cup 3 games, and it was eliminated without taking a point.
In 2021, they did well in the European qualifiers, having beaten Azerbaijan, drawn ireland, and conceded 6 goals in the two matches, but they did score one goal!
Qatar has also fought Egypt
In the Arab Cup in December 2021, Qatar also met Egypt, who lacked Salah, and drew with Egypt in the third place battle, winning egypt through a penalty shootout.
Although there is still a big gap with the strength of European, African and South American powerhouses, Qatar can not become a spoiler in Group A, of course, provided that they are fully defensive!
2, Europe's uncrowned king: the Netherlands, the potential big brother of the list!
The Netherlands' grouping in the European qualifiers is actually not particularly good, first of all, their competitors are not small, the old European powerhouse Turkey, the new generation of Norway, and the strength of the Not too fishy Montenegro team.
But the defender led by Van Dijk is indeed too stable, the Netherlands determined the qualifying advantage early, 10 games are 7 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss, scored 33 goals, only conceded 8 goals, and successfully qualified for the World Cup.
There was Depay in the front and Van Dijk in the back
A healthy Van is too important for the Netherlands!
The Dutch team, which is gradually mediocre on the offensive end, currently has high defensive requirements, and Van Dijk is still at his peak, which is very important for the Dutch team, but being placed in Group A does not mean that the Netherlands is completely safe.
On the contrary, Senegal, which attaches importance to the body, and Ecuador, which has many outstanding young people, the Dutch coach Louis van Gaal also said bluntly: he is very unfamiliar with these two teams, and the only thing he knows is that he hoped to sign Mane when he was coaching Manchester United.
But no matter how the Netherlands is reduced to mediocrity, in terms of international rankings and hard power, the Dutch group qualification should be a more reasonable result!
3. The mysterious master of South America? Ecuador!
Most fans are relatively unfamiliar with Ecuador, mainly from 2011 to 2021, the 5th Copa America Ecuador did not perform much better, the only time to prove themselves, or the 2014 South American qualifiers, force Uruguay to qualify for the World Cup.
Ecuador drew with France in the group stage at that time, and the most famous players at that time were Casedo, who played for Manchester City, and Montero, who moved to La Liga.
But today is different from the past, when most of Ecuador's players have left the national team, except for Enna Valencia, who scored all three goals in Ecuador's 2014 World Cup, he will still play at the age of 32 and most likely his last World Cup.
Valencia joined the Turkish Super League team for 20 years
He is currently the all-time top scorer of the national team and has scored 33 goals for Ecuador!
Their manager is Argentina coach Alfaro, who built Ecuador's home stadium into a brass wall in the South American World Preliminaries, and in the South American World Preliminaries, Ecuador's home stadium only lost to Peru.
In January, they drew at home to Brazil, and on March 30, they also drew at home to Argentina, and home advantage was an important reason why they squeezed colombia! But it should be noted that such a team that relies on home advantage, although mysterious, is likely to perform poorly on the World Cup stage.
Playing for Valladolid in La Liga at the same time, the 21-year-old striker Gonzalo Plata, the 20-year-old midfielder Moises Kecedo, the 20-year-old defender Impepier for Bayer Leverkusen and other young generations are rapidly growing into the backbone of the team!
4. Light of Africa: Senegal!
As the winner of the African Cup of Nations, Senegal undoubtedly has the highest level in Africa, which is not only reflected in the results, but also in the value, with Egypt's African Cup of Nations final, Senegal started 11 people, worth up to 234 million euros!
Mane, Sal, Guye, Koulibaly, Mendy and other well-known stars form a strong African team.
Mane will travel with Salah's dreams
And Mane also played against Salah three times in less than two months, and in the end he laughed to the end, there is no doubt that Mane needs to move forward with the dream of the club teammates!
And Senegal also has the potential to become the dark horse of the World Cup, it is not impossible to compete with the Netherlands team, compete for the first place in the group of A, and all the teams in group A must also strive for the first place in the group, otherwise it is easy to encounter the potential first place of group B: England!
Conclusion: This is a very typical grouping, and the host has little chance of survival
An Asian team, a European team, a South American team and an African team, very typical grouping, quite a bit of "world war" in it.
In fact, no matter which teams are divided, Qatar has almost no possibility of qualifying, unless the 4 Asian teams are divided together, Qatar theoretically has the possibility of competing.
In this article, Liaoqiujun also mainly describes the two teams of Qatar and Ecuador that everyone does not know much, and the Netherlands and Senegal are more of a brushstroke, because friends who often watch the ball are not strangers to these two teams, I don't know if you like such a situation? Feedback is welcome!