Al Shahania coach Alvaro Mejia spoke to the media ahead of their 2024-2025 season Ooredoo Stars League Week 4 match against Al Rayyan.

“We tried to take advantage of the break in a good way to prepare the team through QSL Cup matches. This week, we focused on facing Al Rayyan. We know that they are one of the best teams and have distinguished players, but we are focusing on ourselves and the team is ready for the next match.

“We recently faced Al Rayyan in the QSL Cup and lost. This is a completely different match. We trust ourselves. We will play the match like all matches in order to achieve victory.

“In our last match (against Qatar SC in the QSL Cup), the performance declined in the second half after scoring three goals, so we have to learn from our mistakes and overcome this problem in the upcoming matches,” said Alvaro Mejia.

Al Shahania player Pelle van Amersfoort said, “The team’s preparations to face Al Rayyan are going on well and we proved that during training and in the last match by scoring three goals. We know that Al Rayyan are a very big team, but we are not afraid of them. We are moving step by step in the league championship.

“The important thing is that we trust our attacking ability, but attacking alone is not enough. We play as one team and in the first matches we created many opportunities and did not score, but we overcame this problem and succeeded in scoring two goals in one half, so we will continue to work to score goals.

“Confidence is not enough to score goals and we showed an aspect of integrated teamwork in the past rounds. We do not claim that we will win all matches in the league, but nothing is impossible.”