Andrés Guardado feared he could miss Qatar 2022 due to red tape
The Mexican midfielder revealed that he lived with uncertainty, wondering whether Betis would take time to register him.
Andrés Guardado will be one of the permanent players on Gerardo Martino’s final list for the 2022 Qatar World Cup. His experience and leadership make him a fundamental piece in the Tri, but the ‘Little Prince’ experienced moments of tension while his club Betis took their time to register him and he was afraid of not being able to play for half of the season.
In an interview for TUDN, the Guadalajara Atlas youth product recalled how he felt while waiting for bureaucratic matters to be sorted: “Very difficult, it was a very intense month. Obviously because of the situation that I had to live through. It wa a very stressful situation, because the more time went on, the more complicated it gets. The worst is the feeling of uncertainty, then not knowing what was really going to happen, that they don’t give you a guarantee of something, neither here nor there,” Guardado said.
“By the end, you are unsure of whether they are going to register you or not, so you need to be looking for other options in case you need to leave. That was a bit stressful really, it was a bit exhausting, especially mentally. Anyway, luckily everything was resolved, I’m staying in the place where I wanted to be to enjoy another year here with Betis. It’s great that we have a very nice year ahead of us and we hope to meet our expectations,” he added.
Under pressure for Qatar 2022
Andrés reiterated that his concern was more about the closeness of the World Cup: “Exactly, the year of the World Cup was what made me the most nervous, if the World Cup had not existed, I think that it would have been different, but having it coming up made me really worried; because in the worst case scenario I would have been left without registering and without a team,“ he explained.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have been affected financially because in the end the club would have been punished and would have had to pay my contract anyway. But not having a place to play for these six or three months that are left for the World Cup I think that would have left me struggling financially, so it was what stressed me the most, frustrated me and what had me the most worried”, concluded the Mexican midfielder.
Guardado will play his fifth World Cup to pull level with Mexican legends such as Antonio Carbajal and Rafael Márquez. The Betis midfielder was with Mexico for the finals in Germany 2006, South Africa 2010, Brazil 2014 and Russia 2018.