Qatar vs United Arab Emirates Prediction: Qatar topped their group in R2

Qatar host the United Arab Emirates at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium in Round 3 of the FIFA World Cup Asian Qualifiers. Qatar were top of their group in the last round. Who will emerge triumphant after 90 minutes?

Qatar has gained huge success in football in recent years, winning the AFC Asian Cup two consecutive times, in 2019 and 2023, while the first-ever FIFA World Cup as hosts came in 2022. However, they performed really poorly in such a big tournament and got eliminated at the group stage after just two matches. This saw Qatar's form dip as they won only four of their next 14 games in all competitions. However, they have been growing steadily of late and did well in the second phase of Asian qualification to the 2026 World Cup, beating Afghanistan 8-1.

Coach Tintin Marquez will be looking to keep Qatar's current form and finish top two in Group A in this third round of Asian qualifiers for an outright qualification into the World Cup. They face a hard task against a UAE that topped their group in the qualifying second round.

Barsham; Mohammed, Salman, Mendes, Ahmed; Abdulsallam, Fathy, Al-Ahrak; Afif; Mansour, Ali

The United Arab Emirates have fared better under new manager Paulo Bento, who succeeded in July 2023. They have won 10 out of 15 matches to date compared with just three of the previous 12. Bento will be looking to continue this vein of form in this third round of qualifiers and reach a second-ever World Cup tournament after their last qualification in 1990. However, UAE have found things extremely difficult of late against Qatar, losing three of the last four meetings and finding themselves on the wrong end of a 14-3 aggregate score in favor of Qatar.

Eisa; Idrees, Abaelaziz, Al Attas, Ahmed; Faiz, Rashid; Lima, Alzaabi, Saleh; Adil

Almoez Ali and Akram Afif have been two of the best performers for Qatar over the past couple of years, so they are one of the expected main stars in this match against UAE. They may be joined by talented young striker Tameem Mansour as a third attacker. On the other side, UAE has been in a better shape lately and is unlikely to change their structure from their recent match against Bahrain. Sultan Adil would once again play an important role in UAE's attacking trio with Fabio Lima and Ali Saleh. Team Qatar had the better share of the current matches between these two teams and they would finally manage to nail this one by a decent margin.