I was going to post this as a reply to the Rapid Reaction post below, but I thought it should be here.
That was a bad game. Thats it. You can prepare for months and have the best players at your disposable, at the end its the 90 minutes on the grass that determine the result. Like Bassil, I fumed everytime the commentator said “reserve” side. You can’t have 5 starters in all lines and call it a reserve side!
We were beaten by training-camp set pieces – Adnan Hamad does his homework, he knows our two key centre backs are absent – and got hot-headed and collapsed. Though I have to admit, even when the score was 3-1 I still thought we had a chance because the players moved the ball around and constantly created chances. It was overshadowed by the scoreline of course, but there was a positive flow of play. In the last 20 minutes, the players’ physical fitness gave way and it slowed down.
Mahmoud has to fix the set-piece problem for the Libya match, they will probably focus on those after seeing our vulnerability. Khaled Salem is in form, and showed he can very much reach the goal. I see no reason why winning tomorrow is not possible.
