Al Duhail Head Coach Christophe Galtier, expressed his happiness with the victory achieved today versus Al Wakrah, securing three new points in the team journey in the Ooredoo Stars League. This victory contributed to extending our lead at the top of the league table at the end of the fourth round with a perfect score of 12 points.
Galtier stated after the match, “It is a fantastic result accompanied by a great performance that contributed to our achieving the fourth consecutive victory, which is very important against an organized and big team. I knew very well that the match would not be easy, especially with the return of our international players after an absence from training with us for nearly three weeks, which is a long break, and we were not able to prepare sufficiently due to the short time before the match.”
Galtier continued: “Despite these difficulties that we mentioned, we presented a very good performance during the first half and took the lead logically with clear control over the game. Our players delivered a good performance and exerted a great effort, which made me very happy, and I was completely satisfied with the level presented by our players with the great tactical commitment on the field.”
Galtier added: “During the halftime, I warned the players who had yellow cards for fear of being sent off, but unfortunately, this is what happened with the expulsion of Ibrahima Diallo at the start of the second half, which made us face some difficulties and required us to reorganize our team and positions. In the first half, we defended our areas highly, which changed in the second half, and we retreated a little in terms of defense, which led to some chances in front of our areas, but our defenses showed high efficiency despite some problems.”
Galtier said: “Despite being down in numbers, we were very good, and we had two chances to score from counter-attacks in the second half, but unfortunately, we did not take advantage of them in the best way, which made us suffer due to the pressure in front of our defenses until the end of the match, and we had to exploit those opportunities to facilitate our task.”
Galtier concluded: “Overall, we played in the second half with a man down, and it was important to follow the team’s reaction after the long international break. The elements of our team were up to the task, especially during the events of the first half in terms of the quality of play technically and tactically on the field, in addition to the courage and solidarity in the second half to work on not conceding any goals. In the end, it is a very good result for us.
