Guatemala, the team that was eliminated from Qatar in 2022 without conceding a goal

Soccer is often a fickle sport on many occasions and the Guatemalan national team became the new victim of the unpredictability that competition can be in an area like Concacaf, as the Central American squad was eliminated in the first round of the Concacaf Classification heading to Qatar 2022, despite not having lost any of their four games and not conceding a single goal in the entire group stage.

The chapines once again extinguished their World Cup dream, after drawing without annotations against Curaçao on Tuesday night, at the close of the first round of the Concacaf World Cup Qualifiers, in which Guatemala was one of the two teams, along with Haiti, that did not receive any goals in the group stage.However, the Guatemalan squad could not advance, as Curaçao was left with the first place in group C and with the ticket to face Panama, in the play-off for the octagonal final.

Guatemala had an almost perfect journey during the group stage of the World Cup qualifiers heading to Qatar 2022, as beat Cuba and the British Isles, to later set a record with their 10-0 win against Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and get closer to the classification, which was stopped by Curaçao this Tuesday, after his tie without annotations.

The Central American squad finished the first round of the tie, with a balance of 3 wins, a draw, 14 goals in favor and none against in 4 games, but could not keep the pass to the second phase, because although they tied in the goal difference with Curaçao (+13), the Caribbean squad scored one more goal (15) during the group phase and ended with the hope of the people chapín to advance to the final phase of the tie, for the first since the final hexagonal of 2006.

According to data from MisterChip, Guatemala became only the second team in history, which is out of a World Cup despite not having conceded any goals during their qualifying, as they equaled the Belgian squad, which could not qualify for the 1974 World Cup in Germany, despite remaining unbeatable during qualifying.

The chapin dream is over

Despite remaining undefeated during the group stage, Guatemala was eliminated from the Concacaf World Cup Qualifying and could not make its return to a final phase, as he was left without possibilities of advancing to the new octagonal final of the North, Central America and the Caribbean area, in which the teams of Mexico, the United States, Costa Rica, Honduras and Jamaica are already waiting.

The last time Guatemala was in a Concacaf Final Hex was in the 2006 qualifying round for Germany., which came from the hand of Ramón “Primitivo” Maradiaga for the first time since 1989 and in which they stayed very close to reclassification, scoring 11 points and placing in fifth place.