Qatar players celebrate after defeating Bangladesh 5-0 at Al Duhail Stadium on Friday.
Doha: Felix Sanchez (pictured), coach of the Qatari football team, has expressed his delight after the hosts sealed a dominant 5-0 win over Bangladesh on Friday night at Al Duhail Stadium in their Qatar 2022 and 2023 AFC Asian Cup joint qualifier.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup hosts sealed the three points on Saturday thanks to a brace each from 2019 AFC Player of the Year Akram Afif and 2019 AFC Asian Cup top scorer Almoez Ali, after Abdulaziz Hatem had scored the opener.
Sanchez said in a post-match press conference: "I am happy with the performance of the young players and the good level they provided in terms of physical and mental readiness. They showed a high focus. I wanted to give them this opportunity so that they gain confidence for future matches."
Felix Sanchez
Sanchez added: "All I wanted from today's confrontation was for the players to provide the performance required of them, which is what happened. It was possible to score more than five goals. The first leg in Bangladesh did not serve us well since the weather was bad and also the playing field wasn't good."
The coach of Al Annabi stated that their opponents did not launch any serious attack.
"We succeeded in controlling the match from the beginning until the final whistle. We wanted to score many goals and even the defensive style of our opponents made us focus on building our attacks well.
"I congratulate all my players for what they had presented in today's match. I hope that the national team would continue with the same attitude in the future also," Sanchez said.
James Day, coach of the Bangladesh national team, admitted it was a 'difficult match'.
"It was a difficult match for us. Though we lost but I am proud the way we fought in the match," Day said.
"As I previously mentioned, we have not played any international matches for eight months and have been training for five weeks. The Qatari team has been training for a long time and this has given them a big advantage. It is difficult to attack when you compete with the Asian champions. We have learned a good lesson from this loss. We will try to compensate for this defeat and focus more in the upcoming games.
"Regardless of the result, we achieved some positive hopes of giving many young players the opportunity in this qualifier. In no way can Qatar be compared with Bangladesh. Qatar are ranked 59 and we are ranked 185," Day said.
