Qatar is a familiar team to... Vietnamese fans
The most emotional football event for our country's fans in recent years was the "storm" match at U23 Asia 2018. The most sublime moment was Van Thanh's final penalty kick against Qatar U23. After that match, names like Felix Sanchez, Almoez Ali... were all more or less remembered by Vietnamese fans.
It has been more than 4 years since then and the generation of players who lost to U23 Vietnam that day of U23 Qatar have still been significantly invested in to be the core for the 2022 World Cup. Captain Sanchez and his students are aiming to pass the group stage in their first time participating in this giant playground.
For Ecuador, this is not their first time participating in the World Cup, so if we consider their experience in this playground, the South American representative is much better than host Qatar. However, the preparation of the yellow team was not assessed to be complete as it was not until the last seconds that they passed the legal gate to get to this festival.
The reason is that before that, Ecuador was sued by Chile against FIFA, claiming that the Ecuador squad in the South American World Cup qualifiers had committed fraud when using player Byronestillo, a name believed to be Colombian but still on the Ecuador squad, and also forged documents for children to be 3 years old.
After FIFA failed to award the award, Chile filed a lawsuit against the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It was not until the second half of September that CAS ruled that Ecuador was still eligible to participate in the World Cup.
The dream of the Qatari people has been prepared for many years
The countries that lost to Qatar in the race to host the 2022 World Cup have so far said that this Middle Eastern country has spent hundreds of billions of USD to bring the team to the biggest playground on the planet. If it does not spend about 300 billion USD to build unique infrastructure, what conditions will Qatar with a small area and small population, plus the desert climate will have to compete with its opponents. For the first time with 6 AFC teams competing in the World Cup, Qatar does not want their position to be likened to being used for money.
As mentioned above, the current generation of players in the hands of captain Sanchez have been gathered together very early, around 2015 - 2016 to serve the World Cup goal. They are the reigning Asian Cup champions, which is the result of a methodical, key investment that costs a lot of money. Qatar will enter the World Cup with a new mindset but not a young one. They are ready to bring the image of the country to the world.
Ecuador will use Premier League quality stars
The South American representative's squad has many familiar faces to Premier League fans, especially paying attention to Brighton. They own the trio of Moises Caicedo, Pervis Estupinan and Jeremy Sarmiento. Among them, Caicedo and Estupinan played quite impressively in the most fierce tournament on the planet. The former Enner Valencia captain has also played for West Ham and Everton.
In general, Ecuador's playing style is quite modern, although the squad is not uniform in quality when many players are not allowed to play in major tournaments. Up to now, every time they play in the World Cup, Eccuador has never been highly appreciated but it is not easy to defeat them like a weak team. In front of the home team who are trying to show themselves, the style of playing with effort and counter-attacking defense will be taken advantage of by Gustavo Alfaro and his team.
The match between Qatar and Ecuador will take place at 11:00 p.m. on November 20 (Vietnam time), live on VTV6.
