Spotlight: a focus on each country’s chances at Qatar 2022
Qatar 2022 is just under a few weeks to kick off and all countries that have qualified are gearing up to participate in the global event fully. All 32 nations are presumed to have a real chance at winning the most coveted trophy in football circles. Still, in reality, not all are going with any imagination of going beyond the group stages. In the Spotlight series, we focus on each of the 32 countries that have qualified for the world cup, going back to their past, assessing their present and forecasting their performances at the event that will kick off on November 20.
We will first tackle the countries that qualified to represent the Asian Football Confederation(AFC), then the Confederation of Africa Football(CAF), Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Football Associations(CONCACAF), South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) and the Union of European Football Associations(UEFA) in that order.
The series will ensure we release one article daily to represent one country. We will ensure to cover all the countries before kick-off on November 20.
The host confederation, AFC, has six nations at the tournament owing to Qatar’s automatic qualification as the host nation. That automatic slot added to the four FIFA allocated spots and the one slot available via inter-confederation play-off where Australia beat Peru to qualify gave AFC the second highest representation at the tournament, only second to UEFA.
In all, there will be 64 matches at the finals and a lot is expected from each nation. In the qualifications, there were a total of 865 matches and 2424 goals were scored with an average of 2.8 goals per match. We can thus expect more action from the teams and though two of the three top scorers in the qualifiers, Ali Ahmed Mabkhout Mohsen Al Hajer of UAE (14) and Wui Lei of China (12) are set to miss out following the failure of their respective countries to qualify, Canada’s Cyle Larin (13), Harry Kane and Memphis Depay who tied with Wui Lei on 12 goals will surely represent barring any late injuries.
FACT: apart from Qatar, all the other 32 countries have played in at least one World Cup. Only Canada and Wales are making their second appearances. Qatar is also the only country after Italy 1934 to play in the World Cup without ever qualifying for it.
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