Hickersberger keeps his cool

Al Wahda coach Josef Hickersberger was despondent but refused to criticise his players following their 4-1 loss to Seongnam Ilhwa on Saturday.

The United Arab Emirates champions had their hopes of Club World Cup glory ended by Seongnam, missing out on a mouth-watering showdown with Italian giants Inter Milan in the semi-finals.

But it was a deserved result for Seongnam, who took advantage of Al Wahda’s lacklustre defence to go ahead 1-0 in the fourth minute.

Al Wahda also failed to protect a 1-1 stalemate after Fernando Baiano levelled in the 27th minute, conceding a headed goal to Seongnam centre-half Sasa Ognenovski three minutes later and second-half strikes to Choi Sung-Kuk and Cho Dong-Geon.

While admitting his defenders had a ‘black day’ at Zayed Sports City, Hickersberger said it would achieve nothing to lambast them publicly.

“I can name the players but I won’t because that’s not my job to criticise the players and I won’t blame them in public. I will have a word with them individually,” Hickersberger said.

“We lost and we have to admit that they have been the better side and deserved to win by this margin.”

“We started poorly and made some defensive errors. For this reason, we were one down after just three minutes.”

‘When we came back we couldn’t hold on and were always chasing the game, always behind. In the second half the third goal killed the match and the morale of my players, which is why we lost by three goals.”

“I am very disappointed because my team were not able to play their best. Some players did not manage to recover properly.”

“Many players couldn’t cope with the pace of the game and play well enough and that’s sad because we hoped and expected much more.”

“We didn’t change anything in defence, they played together last season and they’ve been the best formation in the league but yesterday was a black day. They are better than how they appeared.”

Al Wahda will face Mexican club Pachuca in the match to decide fifth place on Wednesday.

“It must be our goal to do everything to get fifth against Pachuca,” Hickersberger said.

“The team has to recover because there are only few days to the next match and I hope they can put in a much better performance against Pachuca.”