GARCIA DEDICATES HISTORIC WIN TO CHAIRMAN AND CAPTAIN

Goals from Saul Olmo Campana and Tran Vong Lu in the opening four minutes secured a place in the semi-finals for the Vietnamese club, although an own goal from goalkeeper Ngo Dinh Thuan in the 12th minutegave Al Rayyan a glimmer of hope.

The Qataris, though, were unable to find a way past the Thai Son Nam defence again despite an improved performance in the second half and the Vietnamese will now play with MFC Emgek of Kyrgyzstan or Qadsia from Kuwait for a place in the final.

Match report: Thai Son Nam FC 2-1 Al Rayyan SC

“I would like to dedicate this victory to two people,” said Garcia. “One is chairman of Thai Son Nam club, Mr. Tran Anh Tu, because the development of futsal in Vietnam is because he has been working to keep futsal going. He works a lot in futsal in Vietnam. Futsal around the world needs people like him.

“And also I’d like to dedicate this to my captain, Nguyen Bao Quan because he represents a set of players, good players, who started futsal without good conditions.

“If we are fighting in these competitions it is because players like Quan started in futsal. I’m from Spain and futsal is developed but we need men like Quan, so I would like to dedicate this to my captain because he is representative of one set of players who have started to play futsal in Vietnam.”

A rapid start secured the win for Thai Son Nam and Garcia stressed that the intensity of his team’s performance throughout the game was the key to securing the win.

“The match was very hard for us but it was very important for the win that we started fast and scored early,” he said. “It’s very difficult to keep this going for the 40 minutes.

“We followed the match plan and our physical condition was good and we kept the intensity. This is important in the knockout phase. We played with 10 different players and that’s important. My team worked a lot and made history for the country. They believed in themselves and in the team.”

Al Rayyan coach Enrique Martinez agreed with his Spanish compatriot that the speed of Thai Son Nam’s start to the game was the difference between the two teams.

“We lost this game in the first five minutes, we didn’t start well,” he said. “After that our team recovered in defence and in attack and in the second half we played well and we had many opportunities to score to draw or even win.

“But this is futsal, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I’m happy with my players but now we go back to Qatar.

“We maybe lost this game on the physical side. Before the tournament it wasn’t possible to play friendly games. The first game of our season was the first game against the Iraqis (NAFT Al Wasat) and I think that might be why we lost.

“The physical side is very important in futsal. Today, we needed to defend differently. Our idea was to press but the Vietnamese have quality in attack and these two goals made it too difficult for my team.”