Haiti vs Qatar

The 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup Group B campaign gets underway at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, as Haiti and Qatar go head-to-head in a curtain-raiser.

Haiti, regular participants in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, have been placed in Group B for this year’s tournament edition. Interestingly, they might be stunned to discover that Qatar, a member of the Asian Football Confederation and the hosts of the 2022 World Cup, will be their opponents. This unexpected pairing is a result of a collaborative arrangement that saw Qatar invited to participate in the 2021 and 2023 editions of the tournament. Haiti’s seventh appearance in the last nine editions comes amid Haiti’s purple patch, with the 1973 Gold Cup champions heading into this clash on the back of five consecutive wins. Under the guidance of Jean-Jacques Pierre, ‘Les Grenadiers’ mustered an eye-catching CONCACAF Nations League campaign (W5, D1), netting an outrageous 22 goals in the process.

On the other hand, Qatar, positioned 26 spots higher in the FIFA rankings than Haiti, will face the Carribean nation for the first time since November 2010. Seeking redemption for their previous 1-0 defeat, a victory in this match will significantly aid Qatar in advancing from the group stages and improving their performance in the 2021 edition. In that tournament, they suffered elimination at the semi-final stage by the USA, who went on to lift the trophy. However, Carlos Querioz’s men have failed to recover from an ill-fated 2022 World Cup campaign where they lost all three group-stage fixtures. Indeed, the ‘Maroons’ have only won twice in their six post-tournament outings (D1, L3), most recently slipping to a disheartening 1-0 home loss to New Zealand in a friendly.