Al Sadd coach Juan Manuel Lillo ‘Juanma’ spoke to the media ahead of their 2022-2023 season Ooredoo Cup semifinal against Al Duhail.

“Every match has its own challenge and this tournament is completely different, and now we will play without some of our international players. We face a great competitor and we played against them in the league a few days ago. We know how difficult the match is.

“Of course, our goal is to win the Ooredoo Cup and we are very excited about the opportunity to reach the final due to the great efforts made by the young players before the World Cup. Reaching the final will be a great achievement for us, especially for this group of young players,” said Juanma.

Al Sadd defender Boualem Khoukhi said, “Ooredoo Cup is different from the league and the semifinal will have only one winner and our goal will be to be in the final.

“We are suffering from some absences as some of our players are with their national teams and also with the Olympic (Under-23) team, but we will work to do our best to win.”