Asian Cup kicks off in Qatar, India’s Blue Tigers captain expected to star

The traditional Asian Football Championship kicks off at 5pm CET on Friday 12 January at the Lusail Iconic Stadium in Qatar, where the last World Cup was played. The stadium, with a capacity for 56,250 spectators, will welcome the home Qatari team as clear favourites against the Lebanese national team. Twenty-four teams in six groups are competing in the Asian Cup.

As is customary, the first two teams from each of the six four-team groups and, in addition, the four teams from the third-placed groups, based on points and scores, will advance to the eighth round (played from 28 January 2024).

In Group A, Qatar is the clear favourite, while Lebanon is the clear outsider. The second advancer from the “A” group should be China, whose league is at a very good level thanks to considerable investments. Tajikistan, a big unknown, will play in Group A. Qatar won the 2019 Asian Cup and will certainly want to win at home. Still, it has a lot of competition this time around, especially in the other groups.

The clear favourite in Group B is Australia, where a quality league competition is played, but let’s not underestimate India, where the Czechs are also in the league competition and the teams from the Indian Super League ISL are quite strong. The black horse of the group may be another team from the former USSR – Uzbekistan. The group is completed by Syria. Australia won the Asian Cup in 2015.

In Group C, the three-time Asian champion from Iran is the favourite, and the United Arab Emirates team will certainly be well prepared. On the other hand, teams from Hong Kong and Palestine should be the underdogs of the group. Japan, the four-time Asian champion, is the favourite not only in Group D, but probably also in the whole Asian cup, with a good team from Indonesia, an unpredictable Vietnam and Iraq (the 2017 Asian champion, by the way).

In Group E, the clear favourite is South Korea, the two-time Asian champion. But it is playing in a quality group with teams that already have the scalps of the big teams – Jordan, Bahrain and Malaysia. Probably the most watched group by football pundits will be Group F, where Saudi Arabia – three-time Asian champion – plays, with Thailand, Oman and Kyrgyzstan keeping it company in the group.

Kuwait – winner of the 1980 Asian Cup – did not qualify for the final tournament of the Asian cup; Israel, the 1964 Asian champion, is a member of the European UEFA association, as are Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Thirty-three-year-old left-back Ehsan Hajsafi, a first-league Greek club and Iranian national team left-back, and Khalid Haidosh, an equally aged Qatari goal-scorer, penalty-kicking specialist and long-time offensive player for Qatar’s Al Sadd SC team, who, at least according to the Asian Cup website, was a key player in Qatar’s 2019 victory, are identified as potential stars of the championship.

And finally, the biggest potential star of the Asian Cup? Thirty-nine-year-old India captain Sunil Chhetri made his first appearance for AFC in 2011, which coincidentally was also played in Qatar, and has become a noted goalscorer for both the Blue Tigers’ club Bengaluru FC and the Indian national team. In 2016, he scored the decisive and winning goal for Bengaluru FC in the Asian Champions League final. At the 2019 AFC, he scored a hat-trick in India’s 4-1 win over Thailand.

Source: THE AFC, Wikipedia