EXPRESSED HIS PLEASURE BY QUALIFYING TO SEMIFINAL ROUND.. ZORAN: THE “BOSS” DOES NOT ENVISAGE A PARTICULAR OCCASION TO PLAN TO CLINCH TITLES
In the post-match press conference held after the match between Al Ain and Fujairah of the President’s Cup, Croatia’s Head Coach of Al Ain, Zoran Mamic, expressed his pleasure that his team qualified to the semifinal round. He stressed: “I enjoy a good experience in dealing with cup matches and when I was the head coach of Croatian Dynamo Zagreb, I played against two teams of the second and third division respectively. Indeed, we could win them only in the added time.”
“it is not a secret to tell you that I am very happy to come out of the match with no injured players although Ahmed Khalil had an injury in his ankle but he is in good shape and will be back in the next match as he is a strong player and enjoy a good level of physical fitness,” said he.
He added: “We wasted a lot of chances during the first few minutes of the match and then we conceded a goal in a very short time. I expected something to happen and as I told you that I have the experience of dealing with the cup matches. in fact, we are lucky that we did not extra time, in addition that Fujairah players suffered in the last minutes of fatigue and exhaustion.”
Responding to a question on whether Al Ain is planning to celebrate the golden jubilee by clinching the three titles of this season, he stated: “It is not necessarily the case because big clubs do not wait for a particular occasion to plan to win championships. Everyone knows Al Ain is the “Boss of UAE football” who performs well in each competition and increase its titles each year at all levels. It is good for the team to put their hands-on titles, but we have not actually won any title so far. We will strive hard to win the titles of AGL, President’s Cup and the AFC Champions League.”
On the secret behind selecting Caio and El Shahat among the four foreigners to play against Fujairah, he said: “El Shahat has already recovered from an injury and needs to play more matches to regain his level of fitness and be ready. Meanwhile, Ahmed Khalil is a good striker and I wanted to give him a chance to play in the starting lineup. As for Berg, you know he has always been a good player and has scored lots of goals in all the matches and I wanted to give Mohamed Fayez the chance to be part of my starting lineup this match because he has great potentials abilities and decided to give a break for Shiotani.”
Commenting on a question on Al Wahda and Al Ain qualification to the semifinal round of the President’s Cup, he stated: “I believe that the President’s Cup is an excellent competition and it is completely different form the professional cup competition. It gives me the opportunity to choose the best players to be part of the starting lineup and this is why you see only the strong and big teams who have already reserved a seat in the final rounds.”
