By Sports Reporter/Doha


New coach Jesualdo Ferreira yesterday said Doha giants Al Sadd will mount a fresh charge on narrowing the gap against QSL leaders Al Rayyan.
Third-placed Al Sadd unveiled Ferreira as their coach last Sunday and quickly got down to plotting the downfall of their opponents Al Sailiya on Friday.
“We are working with the team for the last three days. We don’t have a magic wand to change anything. But we will work together with the players to reach our target. We will try to play better than before,”
Ferreira said at his maiden pre-match press conference since replacing Hussein Amutah.
“There is a gap of 9 points between us and Al Rayyan. We have two games between us and Al Rayyan still to play this season,” the 69-year-old Portuguese said.
“So if we win those two games we will draw close. And if we continue winning our games, I am sure they will have some tough games where they will drop points,” the veteran coach explained.
Ferreira said he has been busy the last three days.”We had a meeting of the technical staff with the players to explain our target and strategy and how we will deal with the upcoming games,” he said.
“We don’t have any other solution but to work together and focus on each match,” the coach said. “It will be important for us to avoid the mistakes that we did before.”
Turning his focus on Al Sailiya, Ferreira said Al Sailiya presented clear and present danger.
“I have seen Al Sailiya game when they won 5-0 against Qatar SC (last week),” Ferreira said. “We have seen that their game wasn’t that strong. And also I have seen Al Sadd’s game against Lekhwiya. So we know that we have to be in a better shape against Al Sailiya,” he said.
“We are focusing on the next game but we have a big strategy for the future. Our training was very good. And let me say this we are not thinking a lot about our opponents. We are focusing on our quality and our issues. We have analysed our opponents but we will work on our strengths,” Ferreira said.
Ferreira, who was the assistant manager for the Portuguese national team in the 1990s, and manager for the under-21 national team until the 1999–00 season, said he is keen to start on a promising note in Qatar. “This game is a start for me but that can become a special game for me,” Ferreira said.
“My first game here in Qatar. I have said before that I am proud to be here with the Al Sadd team. And when they call me I was happy. I hope that I will have good co-ordination with administration, players and bring success to the club. I am trying to adapt quickly with the team  players and administration.

Sailiya keen to continue run
Al Sailiya coach Sami Trabelsi said his team’s comprehensive win against Qatar SC last week was history.
“We have continued to work on the physical and mental aspect of the players. We tried to forget the last game,” Trabelsi said.
“I hope that we will play at our best level in this game, particularly when it comes to being disciplined. We have to play as a unit and play with concentration,” Trabelsi said.
“In the last game Abdul Qadir and Aayesh Mubarak worked well together. They gave us more solutions in attack - an area which was a big problem for us before. We have been in the opponents’ final third area many times but we haven’t been able to score that many goals. I hope that these two and other players combine and get us more goals,” the coach said.
Trabelsi said Al Sadd playing down under new coach could be beneficial to his side. “I hope that Al Sadd getting a new coach will be an advantage for us. But I think the new coach has had enough time to prepare for this game. Not for the future maybe but he has had a lot of days to plan for this game,”
“More than the win in the last match, it was the way we played that made me happy. The players read the game well and were enjoying playing. The three points were definitely important but the way we played, I am hoping to use that as a motivation for the next game,” he said
“We had a big meeting with the president and had decided that the game against Qatar SC will be like a restart to the season for us.
“We had to forget what we had done before. We had a lot of positive points during this game. We will try to take advantage of those in our future games. This game against Qatar SC showed that our team can play against a strong team, play good football and get good results too,” Trabelsi said.