24 Jan 2018
Doha, 24 January 2018. Hosts Aspire Academy were involved in ten goal match with Portuguese club side Benfica that was full of intrigue but it was the last minute header from Aspire’s Naif Alhadhrami that ensured passage to the knockout phase of the competition. Aspire Academy scored twice in the first half with reply from Benfica and the teams went into the break on that score line. Mid way in the first half Naif took in his stride a pass from team-mate before firing into the roof of the net. Not much long after that Aspire were two goals up when forward Mekki Tombari beat a futile attempt of an offside trap to calmly score beyond the diving Dario Mendes Caetano in goal for Benfica.
Benfica head coach Renato Paiva made changes at the break, throwing in some of his starts players whom he had rested in the first half and what a difference the substitutions made. If the first half belonged to Aspire, Benfica turned it round in the second and even had their chief striker Rafael De Brito notched a hat-trick.
Aspire Academy and Benfica produced the tournament’s highest scoring game so far. With a minute of added on time remaining and Benfica having score half a dozen plus one goals, Chinese side, Guangzhou Evergrande was heading for the knockout stage and Aspire on the way out, that was until Naif’s second goal. The third goal for Aspire tilted the goal difference in favour of Aspire and they will duly proceed to the next round by the skin of their teeth