Confident Qatar eye China berth

Qatar coach Felix Sanchez has said his team will be taking one match at a time at this week’s AFC U-23 Asian Cup qualifiers though the overall team objective is to reach the finals of the top football tournament to be held in China next January.
Sanchez saw his team show positive results over a series of eight friendlies in the last six weeks, allowing the long-serving Spanish coach to complete his preparations with a 3-0 win over Bangladesh last week.
Qatar will be joined by Turkmenistan, India and Syria for the Group C qualifiers.
“Hopefully we will get the results to qualify for China finals,” Sanchez said yesterday. “We will try to achieve our objective and that is to reach China finals by being competitive,” he said.
“These boys have been playing together for a few years now. I have been with them for a long time. I have a good group with a good atmosphere which is important. They want to do well so that we have the possibility of playing in China,” Sanchez added.
Qatar’s coach said his team has set about a plan to focus on one match at a time at the July 19-23 tournament to be played at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium.
Hosts Qatar open their campaign with a game against Turkmenistan today, followed by a clash against India on July 21 before closing the tournament with a match against Syria on July 23.
“Today, our toughest opponents are Turkmenistan because we play them first. It will be wrong to think about just one team. That would mean you are not focused on your game,” Sanchez said.
“As I said before, one bad result or one bad game can put a lot of pressure. Then you feel a lot of pressure when you play your next opponent. Now we are only focusing on Turkmenistan. After that it will be India - they are a good team - and after that we will think of Syria,” he added.
Sanchez said it is difficult predict the outcome of matches based on rankings, saying teams hit the pitch with proper planning.
“Football is played over 90 minutes. Anything can happen. Nowadays it is really competitive and well organised,” Sanchez explained.
“We have to be aware in the best way and need to try and play games keeping in mind that it is a short competition. One bad day can put pressure and that can make it difficult to reach your target. So we have to be in very good concentration for all the games,” he added.
Sanchez said Qatar team is well prepared.
“It’s a good number (8 friendlies in last 6 weeks). We had a big number of players - we started the camp with 28 players. Finally you have to have 23 and you need to give every player minutes on the pitch,” Sanchez said.
“We rotate a lot to give chance to everybody so that they show their worth and their level of play. It was good to play these many games. It was a good preparation with right number of games,” he added.
India coach Stephen Constantine said: “These three games will be very difficult for us. But these are the games you want to play and qualify for the next stage. We have done everything we could and we hope we get positive results.”
India have arrived in Doha having played two friendlies against Singapore last week. Constatine’s side lost one game and drew the other.
The Indian coach lamented that the U-23 game was not accorded the respect it deserves.
“We have too many U-23 players in the league. We have players who don’t have teams. We have some players who have played just five or six games the whole season. You have to understand that if you don’t give attention to this age group, then you don’t qualify for the next level,” the outspoken Indian coach said.
“This year we separated the boys only three weeks ago. They are players I have not worked with before. It will be a very difficult task for us against all the three teams. I expect one or two players to join the senior team and that would be the objective,” he added.
Turkmenistan coach Agamyradov Ahmet said: “We hope we can do well since my main players are not here because of injuries. We have studied Qatar, our first opponents. I know they have a Spanish coach and maybe they will adopt the Spanish way of tactics.”
“I don’t have much info on Qatar. I did some research on the Internet,” Ahmet said with a smile.
“I know some of their players. Their top player Afif is here. So it will be tough,” he added.