Coach Olaroiu praises Al Ahli’s resilience

Red Knights rally from behind to salvage a 3-3 draw against Saudi namesakes

Al Ahli coach Cosmin Olaroiu praised the manner in which his side came from behind three times to hold their Saudi Arabian namesakes Al Ahli Jeddah 3-3 at home in their Asian Champions League opener on Wednesday.

Esmail Al Hammadi and Ahmad Khalil cancelled out efforts from Osvaldo and Hussain Al Moqahwi in the first half, before Al Hammadi defied the odds to cancel out Taiseer Al Jasem’s second-half strike, despite the fact the hosts were a man down.

Luiz Jimenez was sent off with 15 minutes to spare for a tackle from behind on Osvaldo and Majed Nasser gifted the visitors their first and third efforts with sloppy goalkeeping, allowing the first to trickle into his goal after scuffing a back pass after two minutes. But Olaroiu was nevertheless happy with his side’s resilience and said the result demonstrated a fresh start on the continent after having struggled domestically.

Showing character

“We practically scored two goals against ourselves with the first and third but we showed character to create opportunities to come back from three goals even after going a man down,” said the Romanian.

“The opening goal was a huge mistake but we scored three goals for each of the league games in which we didn’t score before this and should have had a fourth to win the match.

“If we keep playing like this in the Asian Champions League, we will be much different [to our Arabian Gulf League form]. I know we are motivated for this competition.”

Al Ahli Jeddah’s Christian Gross, who led English Premier League Tottenham Hotspur for a disastrous season in the mid1990s, said he was happy with the result despite his side having continually surrendered the lead. “We had great determination to win the match and had a great gift in the first half, but we went into the attack and this cost us three goals,” said the Swiss.