The moment this might have changed came just seconds before the end of the first half, when midfielder Hassan Al-Haydos fired a pristine cross from the right wing toward the center of the goal, right where his Qatar teammate Almoez Ali was stationed.
Everything that preceded this moment had been a disaster for Qatar as the host nation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and we’re not even talking about the controversy of the bid process, the stadium construction, the last-minute beer ban. We’re just talking about soccer, and how dreadfully the Qataris had performed against Ecuador since the opening whistle of the tournament.
It may be condescending to say all Ali had to do was get his head squarely on the ball. When people say hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, they’re not considering the craft of jumping to place one’s forehead into a curving soccer ball and re-directing it toward a defended target. That’s the job, though, and Ali merely fouled one off — he barely struck the ball and knocked it harmlessly over the end line.
And it was obvious, then: Qatar was 45 minutes away from becoming the first World Cup host to lose its opening game.
That’s the first out of 22 World Cups.
MORE: How Ecuador dismantled Qatar in World Cup inaugural match
That’s the first even though South Africa in 2010 and the United States in 1994 and Chile in 1962 were not exactly world powers when they played host to the tournament.
The final score was Ecuador 2, Qatar 0, and it would have been worse had striker Enner Valencia not seen a goal ruled out by a dubious offside call inside the game’s first five minutes. He scored the two that counted by the 31st minute, and Ali whiffed that once chance to make it a game in first-half added time.With games still to play against FIFA No. 8 the Netherlands and No. 18 Senegal, No. 50 Qatar is in danger of becoming the second host nation to fail to earn a position in the knockout rounds of the tournament, joining South Africa.
🇶🇦 Qatar making unwanted history with the 2-0 defeat against Ecuador.
😩 A host nation had never lost a #FIFAWorldCup opening game before today. pic.twitter.com/YHKmJicvYj
— Sporting News Football Club (@sn_footballclub) November 20, 2022
“No possession, no purpose,” Fox Sports analyst Alexi Lalas said. “It could not have gone worse for Qatar.”
Those who remember the stunning moment a dozen years ago, when Sepp Blatter pulled the piece of paper with the word “Qatar” printed in black ink, might not feel too terribly bad for the host nation.
In the week since the world started rolling into Qatar to celebrate the greatest sporting event on the planet, there have been multiple incidents in which media members have been harassed while doing their jobs, including American Grant Wahl of GrantWahl.com, who was ordered to delete an innocuous photograph of a slogan posted to the wall in the media center “Now is all”. He did not, and eventually the guard lost interest.
Then, just a few days before the games were to begin, Qatar announced it was reversing its earlier approval for FIFA sponsor Budweiser to sell beer inside stadiums during the tournament. Only its non-alcoholic product is now being sold at games.
MORE: Claims of fake fans at 2022 FIFA World Cup
And that’s on top of the most important story in advance of the tournament: the treatment of migrant workers who helped build the various World Cup venues. FIFA president Gianni Infantino chided reporters who attended his press conference for such coverage on the eve of the opener.
“We in Europe, we close our borders, and we don’t allow practically any work from those countries, who earn obviously a very low income, to work legally in our countries,” Infantino said. “If Europe would really care about the destiny of these people, these young people, then Europe could also do as Qatar did.
“But give them some work. Give them some future. GIve them some hope. But this moral lesson-giving, one-sided, it is just hypocrisy.”
His speech was widely criticized.
MORE: What Gianni Infantino said in his bizarre press conference
Now that the tournament has started, the critiques will be mostly about soccer, and it’ll start with the meager performance of Qatar goalkeeper Saad Al Sheeb.
He was let off the hook for abandoning his goal to challenge a free kick and failing to gain a clean connection on his punch of the ball, which led to Valencia’s first strike called off for offside. But then Al Saad fouled Valencia on a breakaway about 10 minutes later and was fortunate to escape with a yellow card. He still conceded a penalty, then failed to stop Valencia’s spot kick.
MORE: Explaining why VAR disallowed Enner Valencia’s opener vs. Qatar
In preparation for this tournament, Qatar went all-in on team chemistry, on familiarity, on connection with its approach to World Cup preparation. And there was none of that apparent against Ecuador.
Before the game, Ecuador head coach Gustavo Alfaro said Qatar should be favored because its national team had spent 12 years preparing for this match.
Qatar’s plan was not unlike what the United States carried into the 1994 World Cup that opened in Chicago and closed in Pasadena, in which the USMNT advanced to the Round of 16 and lost to eventual champion Brazil, 1-0.
With no American first-division league available due to the collapse of the NASL in 1984, there were only a few options available to the U.S. men. Only seven of the 22 players on the final 1994 World Cup roster played on teams in Europe, notably midfielders Tab Ramos, a member of the squad at Real Betis in Spain’s second division, and John Harkes of Derby County in England’s first division.
There were 12 eventual World Cup players simply under contract to the U.S. Soccer Federation, and they — and others who were not fortunate to make the squad — played 34 international games in 1993, then 18 more in the months prior to the opening World Cup game against Switzerland in Pontiac, Mich.
The current soccer environment did not permit Qatar to duplicate this, only to approximate it.
Qatar played 20 games this calendar year, some against club teams such as Udinese of Italy and Mallorca of Spain, one even against an Under-23 side from Croatia. They were 7W-1L-4D in national team friendlies, but they faced only two opponents in the entire period that also were headed to the World Cup, drawing Morocco and losing to Canada.
This was a marked contrast from how the team spent 2021, when they sought out serious competition wherever they could find it. They entered the CONCACAF Gold Cup, North America’s continental championship, and lost a semifinal game to the United States. They faced Portugal, Ireland and Serbia in friendlies, all on the road. They lost those by a combined 11-0.
So maybe we should have seen this coming.
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