Al Sadd suffered a shock 1-3 loss to Al Shahania at the Al Gharafa stadium on Sunday, bringing an end to their unbeaten run this season in the Qatar Stars League and, more crucially, losing the top spot in the table to Lekhwiya.

Shahania, who despite this win are still in the relegation zone, pulled off what is only their third win this season. And they have Masoud Mohammad Reza to thank after he scored an impressive hat-trick to inspire the win.

Sadd had played 13 matches before this encounter and had managed to win 10 of those and draw the other three and were clearly the favourites going into this encounter. But Shahania were also experiencing a reversal of fortunes after their bad start to the season. After being thrashed 0-5 by Lekhwiya on November 30^th, Shahania drew 1-1 against Al Shamal and then upset Al Ahli 1-0. They were riding a wave of optimism and came into this match all pumped up.

The match though didn’t see any major action and it was the closing minutes of the first half that Reza, assisted by midfielder Abdulla Khalid scored the opener in the 45^th minute. 

The first half ended with that score line. In the second half, Sadd were expected to come back strongly but instead it was Shahania who doubled their lead in the 66^th minute. Reza wasn’t done yet and he scored again in the 89^th minute for a memorable treble.

Sadd got a consolation goal through Nadir Belhadj two minutes later but it was too late for a comeback. For the last ten minutes of the game, Shahania were down to 10 men when defender Alvaro Perez received his second yellow of the game but the Wolves couldn’t take advantage.

Sadd enjoyed a lot of possession but couldn’t convert that into goals. They had 18 shots but just six on target and were able to score only once. On the other side, Shahania could only manage eight shots, out of which four were on target from which they managed to score three, a good conversion rate.

Sadd coach Hussein Ammouta will be extremely disappointed in having lost to a team that is currently 13^th in the rankings but this loss opens up the title race after many thought that the wolves might run away with it.