Head coach Felix Sanchez yesterday named a 27-member Qatar squad for the third and final preparatory camp for FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 at home. Sanchez will have to exclude one player as FIFA allows only 26-player squad for the World Cup. Qatar players, who were based in Europe for four months, arrived home on Wednesday for a short training session. After three days of rest, Sanchez and his men held a training at the Jassim bin Hamad Stadium in Al Sadd on Saturday. Today they will hold an open training session for fans at the same venue from 6pm.
After a five-day stay in Qatar, the players will return back to Marbella, Spain for more isolated training session. They will only return home just days ahead of their World Cup debut, where they are placed in Group A along with Ecuador, Senegal and the Netherlands. The hosts will open the football spectacle on November 20 against Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium.
Sanchez and his players have had intense and closed-door training sessions in Spain and Austria in the last few months. However, they have had below-par performance so far. In the two recent friendly matches, Qatar lost tamely to Canada 0-2 on September 23 at Villa Park in Vienna, before holding Chile to 2-2 draw at the same venue four days later.
Qatar squad
Saad al-Sheeb, Meshaal Barsham, Pedro Miguel, Tarek Salman, Abdelkarim Hassan, Boualem Khoukhi, Akram Afif, Mohamed Waad, Musab Khedir, Ali Assad, Salem al-Hajri, Hassan al-Haydos, Mustafa Mashal, Bassam al-Rawi, Assim Madibo, Almoez Ali, Karim Boudiaf, Ismael Mohamed, Mohamed Muntari, Abdelrahman Fahmi Moustafa, Yousef Hassan, Ahmed Alaaeldin, Homam Ahmed, Abdulaziz Hatem, Naif al-Hadrami, Jassem Gaber, Khalid Muneer.
Qatar players will hold a open training session for fans at the Jassim bin Hamad Stadium in Al Sadd on Sunday.
