That's because the moment they were chosen to organize the WC, they wanted to avoid a humiliation. Their initial plan was to simply recruit players from other countries that have ample professional football players in reserve (like Brazil), but the FIFA put a stop to that. So, they decided to implement a long-term plan by holding massive tournaments for youth players on other continents (especially in Africa) and invite the most promising ones with their families to Qatar to receive education in the Aspire Academy. Hence their climb on the Fifa ranking.You know, that was the exact score I put in my fantasy betting at first before I did some research and found out they were this close at the Fifa rankings and changed it xD I expected Qatar to be like in the 100s tbh![]()
However, I'm questioning how much some of these players feel themselves to be Qatarese and I expect the pressure to be tremendous on them.
Ecuador on the other hand is a South-American team and those are always to be wary of. I mean they pretty much have to play on a yearly basis against teams like Argentina and Brasil and they did preform well in the qualifying round.