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Germany and La Roja, far superior to Japan and the winner of the playoff between New Zealand and Costa Rica, must go to the round of 16 and face Belgium or Croatia
The die is cast and the thriving Spanish team led from the bench by Luis Enrique cannot complain either. Despite the fact that Germany, the bogeyman of pot 2, fell to him, on paper La Roja is far superior to its other two rivals in the first phase – Japan and the winner of the tie between New Zealand and Costa Rica – and only a failure history would leave it out of the first round of 16 tie at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. With 230 days to go before the ball starts rolling on November 21 with the opening match between the host country and Ecuador, the draw held this Friday at the Doha Convention and Exhibition Center defines the roadmap for the 29 teams already classified and the eight that are still competing for the three places that will be decided in June.
I know of the circumstance that the Spanish team will not know its first opponent until the playoff next June between the winner of Oceania and the fourth-placed Concacaf. Despite this initial uncertainty, anything other than winning on June 23 at the Al Bayt stadium in Al Khor against the New Zealanders or Keylor Navas’s Ticos is not in the forecast. The ‘Kiwis’ will play their fourth consecutive play-off, but they only got past the first and that led them to the 2010 World Cup, the second in their history. For their part, the Costa Ricans defend themselves with order, they have a top-level goalkeeper, they form a well-made team and even compromised the direct classification of the United States.
If they successfully make it through their debut, Spain will arrive with three points and much more calm in the second game, which will take place four days later at the A Tumama stadium in Doha against the ‘Mannschaft’, the enemy to avoid because of their history, the value of his shield, his figures and his four world titles. However, Spain endorsed him with a blank set in the last game, played in November 2020 at La Cartuja in Seville, and brought him down with that unforgettable goal by Carles Puyol in the semifinals of the World Cup in South Africa. After several years of disappointment in Germany, Joachim Löw left and Hansi Flick arrived, who revitalized the team, more aggressive without the ball and with more established youngsters, although he also brought back veterans like Müller for the cause. He strolled through qualifying and his star is Joshua Kimmich.
To close the first phase, Luis Enrique’s team will face Japan on December 1. The Asians, with Minamino (Liverpool) as a great figure and Real Madrid player Take Kubo among their outstanding youngsters, form a team that plays well, runs a lot and has a defined style, but traditionally lacks punch and a certain mischief. He has opted for a national coach, Hajime Miriyasu, appointed after the World Cup in Russia, but it is costing Japan to obtain the good results that were intuited.
On paper, the difficulties would come in the round of 16, since La Roja would face off against the first or second classified in group F, predictably Roberto Martínez’s Belgium, who face their last chance to make history with that extraordinary generation of Hazard, De Bruyne or Lukaku, or the veteran Croatia of Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic, whom Luis Enrique’s army already defeated 5-3 in the round of 16 of the recent European Championship. And put to make conjectures, in the horizon of quarters the fearsome Brazil could appear, but that already is saying a lot.
Everything is different
As everything is different in the first World Cup in an Arab country, from the dates, the weather and, above all, the working conditions of the workers who build the stadiums, with some 6,500 deaths to date according to a report published by ‘The Guardian’, FIFA also innovated and searched for à la carte schedules so that the most relevant matches reach the maximum audience at the most appropriate times. The fact that it is the closest World Cup, with the eight stadiums spread over a radius of about 75 kilometres, facilitates this ‘ad hoc’ schedule and that locals and tourists, fans of the beautiful game, can attend three matches in person in the same day
The event was presented by the award-winning British actor Idris Elba and the British-Bangladeshi journalist Reshmin Chowdhury, who works for the BBC, spent two years on Real Madrid TV and was already the face of FIFA’s The Best awards. The 2,000 attendees witnessed live performances inspired by the fusion between tradition and avant-garde, a small preview of what Qatar will offer as the host country. The stage design combined the movement and lightness of the ‘dhow’ boats, sailboats of Arab origin characterized by their triangular sails and low draft, the architectural lines of the World Cup stadiums and the silhouettes of the desert dunes.
The audiovisual show of traditional ‘fidjeri’ music, intoned by pearl divers from the coastal states of the Persian Gulf, was accompanied by images of emblematic buildings from around the world, such as the Louvre in Paris or the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City. The public, in turn, enjoyed for the first time the different themes that make up the official soundtrack of the Qatar World Cup, an event “for peace”, according to the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, in his speech. The most emotional of the gala, quite tedious, the images in memory of the Argentine Diego Armando Maradona, the Italian Paolo Rossi, the German Gerd Müller and the English goalkeeper Gordon Banks, four football legends who have died since the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Group A: Qatar, Ecuador, Senegal, the Netherlands.
Group B: England, Iran, United States, Scotland-Ukraine/Wales.
Group C: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland.
Group D: France, Australia-Arab Emirates/Peru, Denmark, Tunisia.
Group E: SPAIN, New Zealand-Costa Rica, Germany, Japan.
Group F: Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Morocco.
Group G: Brazil, Serbia, Switzerland, Cameroon.
Group H: Portugal, Ghana, Uruguay, South Korea.
