Head coach Xavi was left to rue Al Sadd’s mistakes which led to their 3-2 defeat against Mexico’s Monterrey in the second round of the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019 at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium on Saturday.
Monterrey scored two of their three goals after mistakes by Al Sadd players as the CONCACAF Champions League winners advanced to a semi-final meeting with English side Liverpool on Wednesday.
Al Sadd will face Esperance Sportive Tunis in the play-off for fifth place tomorrow.
“I’m proud of the players but we made two big mistakes which affected the result,” said Xavi. “Our opponents took advantage of the mistakes.
“We had a good performance, especially in the last 20 minutes, but we failed to take advantage of the chances that we had. We were hoping to go to extra time.”
Xavi said his side should draw lessons from the match before facing Esperance.
“We should learn from this match and avoid the mistakes that we have made. I’m happy with the performance but we should reduce mistakes in order to improve.
“We will play against Esperance, who are a good side and they had a good performance against Al Hilal. We will fight and give our best to finish fifth.”
Head coach Antonio Mohamed said Monterrey faced a stubborn team who put a lot of pressure on them, especially in the last minutes.
“As we expected, the match was difficult and competitive. We tried our best to put pressure on our opponents who were stubborn and gave us a hard time.”
“We made several mistakes and lost important balls in the middle of the pitch,” said Mohamed. “After taking a 2-0 lead, we sat back and this affected us as we should have pushed forward and scored more goals.
“We should turn the page now and have a better performance against Liverpool. We must give a better performance than we did tonight.”
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