Italy or Portugal, Who will not be in Qatar 2022?
Luck is capricious and, this time, neither Italy nor Portugal has smiled. Two of the best teams in the world coincided a few days ago in the draw for the repechage for the Qatar World Cup 2022, thus leaving us without the possibility of seeing one of the teams compete in the highest competition. Italians and Portuguese will meet in the group C final, with only one ticket to Qatar only for the winner, as long as they pass the semifinals, against North Macedonia in the case of Italy and Turkey for Portugal.
All the qualifying rounds will be a single match and in the case of playing the final, Portugal will have the advantage of playing at home.
Group A of the European play-off will have Scotland-Ukraine and Wales-Austria as semifinals, while on route B Russia-Poland and Sweden-Czech Republic will compete. Meetings to be held during the month of March.
The three winning teams in each group will complete the quota of 13 representatives of European football in Qatar 2022, tournament for which the 10 champions of each group: Spain, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Croatia, France, England, Holland, Switzerland and Serbia.
Statistics for Italy and Portugal
The Portuguese team has played a total of 7 World, having enjoyed the last 5. But nevertheless, they have passed through all without pain or glory. They have not won the title on any of the occasions and the furthest they have come has been in the FIFA World Cup England in 1966, when they won the bronze medal.
An image that contrasts with that of the Italian national team. Italy has won the World Cup four times: 1934, 1938, 1982 Y 2006, thus achieving third place as the team with the most soccer World Cups behind Argentina (8) and tied with Germany (4).
Seeing these figures, The victory of the Italians against the Portuguese seems imminent in case the clash in group C were to occur. But the non-classification of Italy in the last World Cup, the one of 2018 in Russia, something that hadn't happened to Italians since 1958, makes those of Cristiano Ronaldo still have a sweet tooth that ticket to Qatar 2022.
