Quote from: püsür on July 18, 2022, 08:37:03 PM

Quote from: ingiltere on July 17, 2022, 09:59:13 PM

Quote from: Zackgeno96 on July 17, 2022, 08:09:02 PM

Qatar might still surprise people. They are eagerly looking forward to this final tournament and also have all the support. And all African countries are of course also used to having to play football in these circumstances. Something European footballers are not used to. And it's also the middle of Europe's winter. If you play in England, for example, you have a chance that you were still in the snow 2 weeks before. Those are all factors that come into play. We can expect the Netherlands to have the weakest green, but it would be nice if Qatar goes to the next round.

What do you mean by surprise people? Get surprisingly good results and advance to next round? I don't think that's possible at all. They will just finish the group in last place and if they get a draw they are lucky. My expectation for them is to get exact zero points.
Some African teams are really good and if we see some of them in next stages I wouldn't be surprised. We saw Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal in previous tournaments do good things. I wouldn't expect any other club than European and South American to be in semi finals though. That's the stage things are going hotter and big teams don't do easy mistakes at that point.

First of all Qatar getting a single point in the group would be a huge surprise and a huge success for them. They are in that level... Secondly, I still cannot believe we are having a world cup in the middle of summer. As it is written above, the weather situation for the countries are unacceptable in my opinion. Ok world should revolve around the western hemisphere, but come on, a world cup in the winter in a desert country? That is just not right.

Also I respect african teams but they cannot advance to semi finals just because there is a weather advantage. Even this conversation is utterly disappointing for me. We shouldn't even talking about this. We should have had a good old nice world cup by now. Not the winter stuff...

I agree that it will be very difficult for Qatar to win first or second place in the group, because Netherlands and Senegal are much better teams than them.
As for holding the World Cup in Qatar at such an unusual time, and in a country without a great football tradition, I think that it's a question of FIFA being an organization whose first priority is profit and the spread of influence, not just competition.
Even the decision for Qatar to host the World Cup was suspected due to possible corruption, but this was never proven, although suspicions remained.
I agree with you, the African national teams are very talented and have great players like Salah or Mane, but they clearly lack the discipline in the game and the tactical maturity to be able to achieve better results and play in the semi-finals or finals.