QFA
Qatar national team coach Felix Sanchez has spoken about the difficulty of tomorrow’s clash with India in the second round of the joint qualifiers of the FIFA World Cup 2022 & AFC Asian Cup 2023, noting the team’s improvement in the recent period.
Speaking at the pre-match press conference held at the Jassim bin Hamad Stadium, Sanchez said: “It is going to be challenging, but we are ready for it after recovering from the first game (6-0 win over Afghanistan).”
“Obviously, we watched and analysed India’s games from the recent past. We made some changes. We respect their team; they had some good performances in their last few games and they’ll be a tough opponent.”
On Qatar’s future objectives, the coach said: “I think Qatar has been working on a plan for a long time. The players have great qualities, and from my point of view, that’s why we won the (Asian Cup) title in the UAE. We’re just doing our work and trying to develop keep improving. First, we want to qualify for the Asian Cup in China and our main target is, of course, to have a good team to compete in 2022.”
Meanwhile, Qatar national team midfielder Abdelaziz Hatem stressed on the importance of the game against India and added that the Qatari players will not be overconfident.
“As the coach said, it’s an important game for us. The number of games in this group stage is less. We are playing at home and hopefully, we can perform well and get the three points,” said Hatem.
“We will not play with overconfidence. Our goal is to play as champions and win our games.”