By Joe Koraith/Doha

It’s the nature of every football game to have its share of ‘almost’ moments. The chances that didn’t convert into goals. It gets the spectators on the edge of their seats but in the end they count for nothing. All that matters is the ball in the back of the net. Yesterday, Al Sadd’s failure to convert their chances saw them being held to a goalless draw and being knocked out of the AFC Champions League by Saudi side Al Hilal.
Yesterday’s match, held at the Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad stadium was the second leg of the Asian Champions League quarterfinal. Hilal had come into this match having won the first leg by a solitary goal. The draw saw them progress to the semi-finals.
The last ten minutes of the match was where Sadd came into life and almost scored through their substitute striker Saleh al-Yazidi but he ended up hitting the post. There were a couple of more chances that Sadd got but couldn’t convert them. Though the game was dominated by Hilal, the home side could have made them pay by converting these chances. But it wasn’t to be.
“We knew that this will be a hard game for us. Hilal are a strong team. And to add to it some of our players like [Luiz] Muriqui and Khalfan [Ibrahim] were not ready for the game. We missed a lot of chances, especially the one by our young striker al-Yazidi. In a tough match like this where the chances were rare, we had to convert the ones we got,” said Sadd coach Hussein Ammota after the match.
“We made a lot of mistakes in the match, especially in defence. Our attack too wasn’t strong and we weren’t able to execute our set pieces efficiently. In the end, Hilal deserved the scoreline and the semi-final berth,” he added.
Hilal coach Laurentin Reghecamph said that in the end it was the stronger team which progressed. “We showed our level in the game. We are a strong team and deserve to be in the semi-finals. The players are ready and this tough match will motivate them for the semifinals,” he said after the match.
“Before the match I spoke to the players and told them to be focussed on our game plan and not to cut our opponents any slack. Our team did that and we came out on top,” the Romanian added.
Hilal will be very pleased with this gritty performance in what was a very physical game. They were also able to feed off the energy of the large number of Hilal supporters who had turned up for the match and made their presence felt with their constant cheering. The presence of Sami al-Jaber, who played for Al Hilal for twenty years and was their previous coach also seemed to work in Hilal’s favour. The retired Saudi player is now the director of football at Qatar’s Al Arabi club.
The match began, as expected, on a careful note by both teams as they looked to find their feet. But as the match progressed it was the visitors who started dominating the game. While they couldn’t get too many shots on goal, they were able to control the game in the midfield.
In the 30th minute, Hilal got their best chance of the first half when forward Nassir al-Shamrani ran down the left flank and crossed the ball to Saud Kariri who put the ball into the path of Neves Thiago but the striker could only manage a weak shot straight at the Sadd goalkeeper Saad al-Sheeb.
Thiago had another chance moments from the break when the Sadd defence muddled up an easy clearance and the ball went straight to the striker. Thiago fired it in from the edge of the box but his shot was tipped over by al-Sheeb.
The second half saw Sadd start brightly and the players looking to keep the ball but that didn’t last long and the visitors took control again. But neither made matters interesting in the final third of the pitch.
The first moment of real excitement in the second half came in the 64th minute when Salman Alfaraj, who scored the only goal of the tie, got a great lob inside the six-yard box but he fell, claiming to have been fouled. The referee didn’t give the penalty though and the entire Hilal bench was up on their feet in protest.
After Muriqui was substituted by al-Yazidi in the 70th minute, Sadd’s form improved and they started looking more threatening. Sadd then went into an all-out attack mode. In the 79th minute Nadir Belhadj send in a good cross into the box but it was the diminutive Ibrahim who jumped for the header and the Hilal keeper Abdullah Alsdairy was able to palm it away.
Sadd got their best chance of the match in the 86th minute. Al-Yazidi set off on a good run through the middle, dodged a defender and fired in his shot only to see it hit the post.
In the 88th minute, Sadd midfielder Belhadj send in a good cross into the box but Tabata could only manage to head over the bar.
With five minutes of added time, Sadd was giving it their all. In the final minute of the game, there was another lob into the box, this time from al-Yazidi but Tabata again headed over the bar.