28 Oct 2018
Jakarta, 28 October 2018. In an intense quarter-final of the 2018 AFC U-19 Championship, Qatar’s national team defeated Thailand with the final score of 7-3 after extra time and is going to the semi-finals. Their place in the tournament’s top-4 automatically secures them a spot in the 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Poland.
It was another thriller with a happy end for Qatar’s U-19 national team that is largely made up of graduates of Aspire Academy: After a great start and a 2-0 lead at half-time thanks to goals scored by Hashim Ali (13’) and Nasser Al Yazidi (21’), they were down 3-2 after 87 minutes and facing being knocked-out. But then Ahmed Suhail scored the 3-3 with a fantastic free-kick (87’) that took the teams into additional 30 minutes of extra time.
There, the Qataris demonstrated their class in their offensive line, trashing Thailand 7-3 with goals of Abdulrasheed Umaru (99’, 117’), Khaled Mansour (106’) and Youssef Ayman (120’).
Qatar team head coach Bruno Pinheiro declared that Qatar’s next target is to reach the AFC U-19 Championship Indonesia 2018 final. He went on to say , “We are of course very proud to be going to the 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup. A lot of people have been working very hard to make this happen and I am sure that all of Qatar will be proud of the players,” he said. We now have three days to recover both physical and mentally before our semi-final. Our target now is, of course, to reach the final of the U-19s, because when you are in the last four, that is all you want to do – win the game and be in the final. We never think too far ahead though. We will focus on the semi-final where we intend, once again, to play the way we play – that is our main weapon. We will do everything we can to go through and maintain our own style throughout as that will give us the best chance of reaching the final.”
Qatar is going to face the winner of Korea Republic vs Tajikistan in their semi-final game on Thursday, November 1.