Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Doha: Goals from Mohammed Hassan and Hammadi Ahmed were enough to see Iraq’s Air Force Club into the AFC Cup quarter-finals following a 2-1 victory over Jordan’s Al Wehdat at Saoud Bin Abdulrahaman Stadium on Tuesday.
Hassan opened the scoring for the hosts inside the opening quarter of an hour before Hammadi Ahmed scored his tournament leading 12th goal of the competition to make it 2-0 to the Iraqi side.
Abdallah Deeb did pull one back for the Jordanians just before half-time, but they were unable to make further incursions into the Air Force Club defence as the five-time Iraqi Premier League winners advanced to the last eight.
“I’m happy with this result because we are now in the quarter-finals of the competition,” said Air Force goalkeeper coach Hashim Khamees. “It was a big match. We overcame difficult conditions and we took advantage of the chances we created.
“In the second half, our performance was not so good as the players were tired after the great effort they put in the first half. However, we played with good concentration and defended our lead until the end.”
The club from Baghdad had reached the Round of 16 after topping Group C with 15 points and they showed that same form in the early stages of the match in Doha as Hassan opened the scoring on 13 minutes.
Bashar Resan chipped the ball forward towards the midfielder who surged into the area and slotted the ball between the legs of Al Wehdat goalkeeper Mohammad Abunabhan.
Striker Ahmed, who has scored in every one of Air Force Club’s AFC Cup fixtures so far, then made it 2-0 as he headed home Sameh Saeed’s cross on the 37th minute.
The visitors did strike back before half-time, though, as Amer Deeb played a neat pass to his namesake Abdallah Deeb who had enough time on the edge of the area to fire a right-foot shot past three defenders and goalkeeper Fahad Talib to reduce the deficit.
After the interval, the onus was on Al Wehdat to find a second goal and they worked hard to do so, as they controlled proceedings in the second half.
But despite their efforts, the away side struggled to create any clear-cut opportunities on Talib’s goal and Air Force Club were able to see out the final minutes and book their place in the next stage of the AFC Cup.
“I’m disappointed with the defeat. We should have got a better result,” said Al Wehdat coach Raed Assaf. “In the first half we didn’t play well and we made several mistakes. This cost us two goals and made our task very hard.
“We didn’t start well and this affected our general performance as it was very hard to make a good comeback against a strong team like Air Force Club. We played better in the second half but our opponents had a solid defence which stopped us converting the chances we created.”
Photo: Lagardère Sports