Riyadh: Qatar coach Djamel Belmadi praised the efforts of Ali Assadalla who came off the bench to score twice as the Maroons beat Oman 3-1 in Sunday’s Gulf Cup semi-final.
Raed Saleh put the sultanate ahead on 24 minutes but the Maroons equalised through Hassan Khaled’s penalty on the half-hour. Second half substitute Assadalla then tapped in two rebounds off the post on the hour and on 67 minutes to secure the win.
Qatar will now play hosts Saudi Arabia in Wednesday’s final after the Green Falcons beat defending champions UAE 3-2 in Sunday’s other semi-final.
“With games every few days you need players who are fresh,” he said. “You need to believe in players who can come off the bench and make a difference, this was the case today, so it’s good for him [Assadalla] and for the team, it’s good for everybody.”
“The most important thing is that we create chances in each game,” he added. “We did that, the only thing is we didn’t have a chance to score. But today we created chances, it was exactly the same thing as the last three games, but the difference was that the goals went inside the net.”
Oman coach Paul Le Guen, meanwhile, bemoaned his side’s lack of rest and power for their exit. “At this stage of the competition, it’s a big advantage to have four days’ rest. Qatar had that whereas we had only three days’ rest,” said the Frenchman, whose side topped Group B with two draws against the UAE 0-0 and Iraq 1-1 before a 5-0 win over Kuwait.
“The second half became more difficult because we lacked a little bit in our legs and energy levels, but I know that we gave the maximum and I want to thank the players.
“Qatar also had more power than us. We were not able to react in the second half because they used their power and we were a little bit tired and we didn’t come up with a good solution.
“We have to carry on working on our physicality because some teams have more power than us. It was obvious tonight [Sunday]. But, power is not a short-term fix. Power is a mid-to-long term project and we have to work on it.”
