Ecuador won the World Cup opening game against Qatar
In spite of a mass exodus of supporters during Qatar’s first-ever World Cup match against Ecuador, head coach Felix Sanchez claims his team felt backed and supported.
In the tournament’s first game, played on Sunday at Al Bayt Stadium, Enner Valencia ruined the fun with a first-half double. Qatar were thoroughly outplayed and failed to record a shot on target in a lackluster performance, Valencia also had an early goal contentiously disallowed by the VAR for offside.
In light of upcoming Group A matches against the Netherlands and Senegal, Sanchez is more concerned with trying to make Qatar more competitive than lamenting the lack of support from the home crowd:
“Truth be told, I have enough work to do to take a look at it,” the Spaniard said.
“We felt backed and supported and we hope for the next game, people will feel prouder and keep supporting us to the end of the tournament.
“The atmosphere was great, people were very much looking forward to this game.”
“We knew [a loss] could happen and the result can sometimes be difficult. We will try to learn from today and I’m completely sure we will make people feel more happy with our performance.”
Sanchez made no excuses for his lackluster performance in Qatar, which never got going:
“There’s no excuse, we want to congratulate our opponents, they deserved to win,” he added.
“There is a lot of room for improvement. Maybe the responsibility and nerves got the best of us. We didn’t start well. It was a terrible start.”
