Al Arabi coach Younes Ali spoke to the media ahead of their 2021-2022 season QNB Stars League Week 17 match against Al Shamal.

“The Al Shamal match is important and decisive in our league journey, especially since they play distinguished football.

“We took advantage of the break in the best way, by correcting the mistakes that we made and preparing for the next decisive stage. We also suffered from absences, be it injuries or national-team duties of players. We hope to make a strong return and regain the strength of the team.

“Al Shamal have good players and they need to win the match after losing the last match against Umm Salal and to get out of their current position.

“During the break, the players prepared psychologically for the remainder of the league matches. We take each match as a final in order to obtain the three points, which is the most important thing during the coming period,” said Younes.

Al Arabi player Aron Gunnarsson said, “The remaining matches in the league are more important and difficult. We played a difficult match against Al Shamal in the first leg and achieved three points, and this is our goal this time as well.

“We know very well that they will fight for the points, especially after losing in the last round, so they desperately need to win and we are ready for a difficult game.

“We will fight for every point to reach the top four by the end of the season. We know very well the difficulty of it, but we will fight and give off our best, as we did in the first leg.”