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| JUBILANT: Al Sadd’s Raul Gonzalez of Spain celebrates with teammate Abdulkareem Hassan (L) after scoring against Qatar SC during their Qatar Stars League match in Doha. (Reuters |
A brace of goals each by Senegalese recruit Mamadou Niang and Spanish star Raul Gonzalez saw Al Sadd hand nine-man Qatar Sports Club a 5-2 drubbing in a high-voltage Qatar Stars League match at the Qatar Sports Club yesterday.
The tally for Al Sadd was completed by Ibrahim Majed Abdulmajed. For Qatar SC, Bakari Kone and Youssef Safri reduced the margin.
Al Sadd now have six points from two wins, while Qatar SC are yet to open their account after losing both their opening matches.
Qatar Sports Club lost both Murad Naji Hussein and Ali Saber for atrocious challenges on Hassan Khalid al-Haydos towards the end of the second half. But by then Al Sadd had already done the damage and Qatar SC were doing all the desperate catching up.
For Hussein this was his second yellow card. He was earlier booked for a similar offence on Raul. Substitute Saber was given the marching orders straight away.
Though the scoreboard suggests that Al Sadd won the contest fair and square the major difference was that they held on to their opportunities and Qatar SC repeatedly failed to do so.
Three minutes into play and Al Sadd were put into the driver’s seat by Niang with a brilliant left-footed volley off a cross from the right flank by al-Haydros.
Much was expected from Qatar SC forward Kone and he did not disappoint by putting his side back into the match with a fine strike that settled into the right corner of the goal in the sixth minute.
However, in the 10th minute, Qatar SC skipper Safri made his team pay dearly after he brought down Raul by pulling his jersey right in front of the referee Abdulrahman
al-Jasem who had no hesitation in pointing to the spot.
The experienced Niang, who stepped in to take the spot-kick, found the goal with a neat placement and in the process also completed his double.
A pumped up Al Sadd went on to widen the lead to 3-1 after Raul got into the scoring act. The Spaniard showed his class by sneaking in a goal between three defenders with a neat tap after being fed with a measured back pass by Hassan Abdulkarim.
After the two-goal cushion, Al Sadd unleashed a series of raids. Raul, Niang and Nadir Belhadj all missed scoring opportunities by a whisker and so did Qatar SC’s Mohamed Razaq.
Razaq did enough to flick a cross from the right flank but it rolled past agonizingly close to the far post.
With both sides pressing hard the second session’s play was equally intense. It was game on as Qatar SC reduced the margin to 3-2 in the 47th minute. Al Sadd custodian Mohamed Saqr completely misread the bounce off a free-kick from the deep by Safri and the ball settled into the goal after slipping straight through his butter fingers much to the embarrassment of the Al Sadd team.
However, Al Sadd quickly made amends by pumping in two back-to-back goals within a span of just three minutes. First Majid left the entire Qatar SC camp stunned with a clinically executed banana-kick off a corner. The ball curled enough to leave the entire Qatar SC defence and the custodian Mubarak Budawud clueless.
Then Raul completed his brace by a left-footed effort from the top of the box after latching on to a defection from a defender.
Despite trailing 5-2, Qatar SC forwards kept creating opportunities but they were let down by poor finishing
Elsewhere, a 10-man Al Arabi were held to a 1-1 draw by Al Khor. Matthew Spiranovic put Al Arabi in the lead in the 14th minute, while Julio Cezar saved the day for Al Khor with a goal in the 63rd minute.
In another match, Al Kharatiat and Al Garrafa settled for a goalless draw.