Qatar Football AssociationNews
09.01.2015 23:49 in :

CANBERRA: Qatar are keen to better their two quarterfinal berths at
previous editions of the Asian Cup, team manager Fareed Mahboob said
ahead of the team’s opening clash on Sunday.

“This is Asia’s top national team event and obviously we want to make
a mark,” Mahboob said after a team training session on Friday.

Qatar take on the UAE in their first clash on Sunday.

“Our first goal is to qualify for the knockout stages,” Mahboob said.
“Once we do that then we take one step at a time and see how far we
can go,” he added.

Qatar reached the quarterfinals at the 2011 edition which was held in
Doha. Japan beat Qatar in the last-eight stage.

“We are looking forward to the start of the event since we have trained
and planned for a quite a while,” he said.

“The first step is to pick up win points and move forward in the
championship,” the former Al Rayyan goaliesaid.

“There are no injury concerns. The players feel relaxed and ready.
They have trained for long periods of time and they know what to do,”
Mahboob said.

“Hopefully they will put up a great show,” the manager said.

Mahboob said Qatar coach Djamel Belmadi had done the homework on the
UAE side, having studied tapes of their recent matches.

The other two teams in Qatar’s group are Iran and Bahrain.

The tournament features 16 teams.