Lebanon was able to win 3-2 vs Sri Lanka, in a game that saw Joan Oumari becomes the third Lebanese player to score a brace vs Sri Lanka and Kdouh score his fourth international goal.
Sri Lanka’s coach, Amir Alagić, started his press conference by congratulating Lebanon. He stated that the loss was logical due to the difference of quality between the two teams.
Afterwards, Jamal Taha started his press conference. According to him, he felt that the first half was good, in which the Lebanese side missed 7 or 8 easy chances. He could not say the same about the second half. It is something the National Team needs to work on.
Answering a question from FA Lebanon, about the trouble in the defensive transitions and attacking building ups in today’s game, Taha said that it is always hard to score against a team that only defends and play on the counterattacks. Even though they scored first, we were able to comeback and score 3 goals. The game vs Turkmenistan will be different as they will not implement the same tactics as Sri Lanka. It will be easier to create and use spaces in the second game rather than today’s match.
Taha also answered another question concerning what to work on for the next games. He stated that the work will mostly be mentally. Some players thought Sri Lanka will be an easy win and that’s wrong, there’s no easy games in Football. The team must know its limits and try to push them further and correct our mistakes. He also referred to the scenario of the two friendlies in March, when the Cedars didn’t play as expected vs Jordan but were much better a couple of days later vs Kuwait.
Taha concluded stating that the coach’s job is to guide the team into creating chances, the scoring is upon the players. Nevertheless, the whole squad will work on fixing those mistakes.
