Al Duhail Head Coach Hernan Crespo attributed the loss that the team suffered versus Al Hilal this evening to the Saudi team readiness and experience in this tournament, and the coach said in the post match press conference held in the press conference hall: Football has no secrets, and when you face a team like Al Hilal and your team lacks important players, you can lose and I am very proud of our players’ performance in this tournament because they reached this stage for the first time in their history.

Crespo said: We faced a team that succeeded in defeating the Brazilian Club Flamengo and lost the final to Europe giants Real Madrid and succeeded in scoring in their nets. This is here the obvious difference between the team that reached the semifinals for the first time and the team that used to play the final or even win the title, and the road for us was difficult to reach this stage. When you face a better team than you, it is difficult to keep the pace, and we may have been waiting for surprises to happen, but didn’t happen. Never to mention also the pressure of matches. We must learn from this defeat and strive to work and build on the learnt lessons..

Crespo continued: Our defender Semedo was not lucky after the injuries that kept him out of action for a long time, and I must thank the player Federico for helping us reach the semifinal. In addition, there is Edmilson’s injury that lasted for a long time, and we are unlucky in terms of injuries that kept away from us more than one important player in our squad.

Crespo concluded: We have reached the semifinal with low energy due to the pressure of the matches as well as the injuries that affected us. We have confronted a big team, and I cannot explain what happened today on the field. I did not have many players that I relied on, and Al Hilal was better than us in today’s match