Where is the strong Qatar U20?
*Vietnam - Qatar: 9 p.m. Saturday, March 4, on MetaSports.
Qatar disappointed in the opening match when losing 0-1 to Iran, but they will still play in the upper position when meeting Vietnam. Coach Inaki Gonzalez announced that he would not allow Vietnam to pass the ball easily in the middle of the field, signaling another difficult match for teachers and students Hoang Anh Tuan.
Qatar's best achievement at the tournament is the 2014 championship, with players currently the mainstay of the team such as defender Salem Al Hajri, midfielder Assim Madibo, Akram Afif or striker Almoez Ali. If the above generation of players is invested for the 2022 World Cup, when Qatar is the host, their current generation is less invested. Of the 22 Qatari players participating in the tournament that year, 13 played football abroad, a rate of 59%. Their ratio at the AFC U20 2023 is only 26%.
In the group stage, Qatar won all four matches against Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, scoring 14 goals and conceding only one. But in the first match of the final round, Inaki Gonzalez's army lost 0-1 to Iran in a match where they were inferior in many ways.
Iran had 22 shots in the game, more than three times that of Qatar, and five times more corner kicks. According to Opta's offensive pressure statistics, Iran cornered the opponent for most of the time. Qatar only played well in the first 10 minutes of the first and second half.
The above statistics do not show that Vietnam is guaranteed to win Qatar, but Hoang Anh Tuan's teachers and students will have more opportunities to defeat this opponent than in the last match of the group stage against Iran.
Qatar's style of play is to deploy short balls, putting a lot of effort into the left 11th striker Ahmed Al-Rawi. In the three attacking directions, the left wing accounted for 45% of the phase of Qatar's ball. In addition to Al Rawi, 10th central midfielder Jassem Al-Sharshani also repeatedly drifted left to mix the ball with teammates. Meanwhile, the number 7 right striker and captain Mubarak Shanan rarely rises.
Vietnam played with a 5-4-1 formation in the opening match against Australia 1-0, with three defensive players on the right, mainly striker Nguyen Thanh Nhan, defender Ho Van Cuong and central defender Nguyen Manh Hung. Thanh Nhan and Van Cuong are 20 years old, while Manh Hung is only 18 years old, but impressed during a training tour in Germany last year. "Vietnam's tactics against Australia are correct, and we have to do the same against Qatar," coach Hoang Anh Tuan said before the match.
Qatar will focus on controlling the ball better against Vietnam, according to coach Gonzalez. And Hoang Anh Tuan's army is likely to continue to defend and counterattack. If Vietnam wins Qatar, Vietnam will enter the quarterfinals in case Australia does not beat Iran.
