Al Sadd coach Hussain Ammota (top right) speaks to his players during a training session in Doha yesterday. They will take on Saudi side Al Hilal in their AFC Champions League quarter-final second leg match today.
By Joe Koraith/Doha
It’s familiar territory for Al Sadd, but it’s definitely not where they wanted to be. Once again in their AFC Champions League campaign, the Qatar giants find themselves in a tight spot with the stakes really high in their quarter-final second leg match at the Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Stadium today. The match begins at 7pm.
In the first leg, Al Hilal emerged victorious with a 1-0 scoreline which means Sadd need to win by a two-goal margin to progress to the semi-finals.
And though Sadd will be walking a tight rope in today’s match, they can take some confidence from the fact that they have managed to step up and deliver in similar crunch situations in their Asian Champions League campaign. Twice.
In the group stages, Sadd needed to win their last match against UAE’s Al Ahli to progress to the quarter-finals. In that match, played at the same venue as today’s match, Sadd conceded a goal but they fought back through goals from Khalfan Ibrahim and Rodrigo Tabata to register a thrilling win.
In the quarter-final against Iran’s Foolad Khouzestan, Sadd were held to a goalless draw at home. In the second leg, the Wolves were down two goals by the 29th minute but then staged another remarkable comeback with Luciano Pereira scoring a brace (77th and 87th minute). Sadd progressed to the semi-finals on the basis on away goals.
The 2011 Asian Champions League winners will be hoping for another such rescue act today. But it is going to be a very tricky situation considering that Sadd have to attack and at the same time ensure that they don’t concede. Even a single goal conceded would mean that Sadd would then have to win by a 3-1 scoreline. So on and so forth.
Another hurdle that the home side will need to overcome is the doubts regarding the fitness of Ibrahim and their new Brazilian signing Luiz Muriqui. Ibrahim came on as a substitute in the first leg in the 65th minute while Muriqui didn’t feature. The absence of Ibrahim, former AFC player of the year and Muriqui whose brace won them the Sheikh Jassim Cup against Lekhwiya will prove to be hugely detrimental to their chances of scoring goals. But coach Hussain Ammota hopes they will be ready for the game. “I can’t give a full answer over whether they will start or whether they will come on later, but I hope both of them will be ready for the game,” said Ammota during the pre-match press conference.
When these two teams had met in the group stages, Hilal had meted out an embarrassing 5-0 loss to Sadd. And while Ammota’s side were able to restrict Hilal to just one goal in the first leg of the quarter-final, today’s game requires them to be more attack oriented. “It won’t be an easy game. My tactics in the first game were to keep it tight and not concede a goal, but I will tell my players to attack to go and score so we can go through to the second round,” said Ammota.
“Al Hilal are a very big team with great players, especially in attack but I hope we can score at least one so we can take the game into extra time, or two to go through,” he added.
But Ammota knows that tactics will play a huge part in this game with his side having to maintain a tricky balance between attack and defence. “Because of their system and because the match is 90 minutes, we can’t attack all the time,” he said. “Maybe we will attack for the first 10 minutes or 20 minutes, but the goal could come in the last minute,” said the Moroccan who will be boosted by the availability of defender Abdelkarim Hassan who was suspended for the first leg.
“We can’t be open for the whole game because we’re playing against a very good team. We have to try to not give them too much space at the back, attack hard as a team and hope that the players can score from the chances that they have,” summed up Ammota.
And it is this need to score which Hilal plan to exploit. “It’s going to be hard for Al Sadd. They need to score, so we will have more space. I hope my team will play well and my team will score, I’m sure,” said Al Hilal coach Laurentiu Reghecampf during the pre-match press conference.
The Romanian coach who took over from Sami al-Jaber at the end of last season was confident about his team’s chances. “We came here to Doha in order to maintain our chances in the competition,” he said. “We are ready for all the possibilities and we know that our opponents are strong especially when they play at home but I have full confidence in my squad.
“We have nothing to be afraid of and we have big confidence in our teams as we deserved to get this far in the competition. Al Sadd played in a defensive formation in the first leg but I expect a different performance tomorrow because they must score.”
So yet again, it’s all to play for, for Sadd and yet again the faithfuls will be hoping that Qatar’s powerhouse can pull this one off too.
