The Spanish coach, Juanma Leo, expressed his happiness for his team’s arrival in the final match of the fifty-first edition of the Prince’s Cup for football, after defeating his counterpart Al-Shahaniya by five goals to one in the match that took place between them today at Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium in the semi-final round. from the tournament.
The 57-year-old coach said during the press conference after the end of the match: "We are happy to reach the final. It was a special match and we managed to control most of it and we did not make many mistakes, and we dealt with the events very intelligently.".
added: "The team’s performance declined after scoring the third goal, which enabled the opposing team to reduce the difference, but we succeeded later in returning and maintaining calm.". He explained that the absence of defender Pedro Miguel from today’s match was due to the injury, indicating that he preferred to rest the player in this confrontation in order to reach the required readiness during the next confrontation of the team in the league within the 20th round.
The Al Sadd coach concluded his remarks by saying:"We are striving to achieve the Emir Cup title, and we are one step away from that, and we will try our best to be able to achieve this goal, regardless of the identity of the opponent that we will meet in the final.". For his part, Nasser Jalal Jafari, the assistant coach of Al Shahania team, expressed his satisfaction with the performance shown by his team despite the loss it suffered, stressing that Al Shahania’s arrival to this stage of the championship is a great achievement.
And he said :"We played a good match, and Al Sadd is a great team with great tournaments, and the penalty kick was a major turning point.. Reaching this stage of the tournament is an achievement for us after we were able to beat big teams like Al Wakrah and Al Gharafa".
Al Shahania assistant coach concluded by saying:" Our team gave everything it had during this confrontation, and our focus was great in order to continue in the championship and achieve the goal by crossing into the final match, but this did not happen and we were not lucky in the end.".
Al-Sadd had avoided the surprise of Umm Salal in the quarter-finals by defeating it 3-1, while Al-Shahaniya reached this stage by defeating Al-Gharrafa in a penalty shootout. It is noteworthy that the final match of the 51st edition of the Emir Football Cup, which will be hosted by Ahmed bin Ali Al-Mondial Stadium, will be held on May 12, and it is the second time that this stadium hosts the final match of the competition after the 2020 final, in which Al-Sadd won the title at the expense of Al-Arabi.
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