DAMMAM: Al-Qadsiah’s title challenge may have hit a roadblock in their 3-2 home loss to Al-Hilal, but head coach Brendan Rodgers does not believe alarm bells are ringing.
Al-Qadsiah’s Julian Quinones canceled out Gabriel Martinelli’s opener in the first half, before goals from Ruben Neves and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic carried Al-Hilal to victory.
“Tonight was about Al-Hilal knowing we are a team that is going to be fighting until the end of the season,” Rodgers told reporters. “You have to remember; this is a club that was in the second tier just two years ago.”
When asked about the small margins by which the league title is often decided, Rodgers told Arab News: “I’m certainly not worried after this defeat. Since I’ve been here, I’ve found that a lot of the teams here don’t lose many points, but I think this season, with the games so close together, those teams will lose points.”
The schedule looks demanding for both teams. Al-Qadsiah host Al-Sadd in Dammam on Monday, and a day later Al-Hilal, back on the road, face Al-Shamal in Doha.
“Ultimately, by tomorrow, we’ll forget about this result and move on to our next game,” Rodgers said.
Al-Hilal head coach Simone Inzaghi, meanwhile, was extremely pleased with the result and with his side’s performance.
“We played against a very good team in every aspect, but I am very happy with the performance of my players — and it is a deserved victory for us,” he said. “What I believe worked for us this game was that we managed to press very well, and lose the ball on fewer occasions.
“But the long hours of travel have taken their toll on us, as we saw with Martinelli’s injury in the 49th minute. But we have a great deal of high-quality substitutes.”
The closure of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh has forced Al-Hilal into a run of land journeys: a bus to Doha for last week’s AFC Champions League Elite clash against Al-Sadd, back to Riyadh by road, then on to Dammam.
“Usually, we would go back to Riyadh after this game and then travel by plane to Doha for our next game in the AFC Champions League Elite,” said Inzaghi. “But we will stay here, have a training session and then go by land to face Al-Shamal.”