“It is a very important three points away against good opponents,” said Milojevic. “What we wanted was to have our destiny in our own hands and in the last three rounds, we have kept that hope alive. I believe one more good game will be enough for us to advance.

“The players produced a very good performance, especially in defending crosses because we know that is what Shorta are good at. 

“In the second half, we made some changes to create better movement and play but the goals came from penalties, still I believe that we deserved these three points.”

Jonatas Santos put Al Wasl ahead in the 14th minute with Al Shorta equalising through Fahad Youssef in the 50th minute, however, two penalties converted by Fabio Lima and Nicolas Gimenez sealed the points for the visitors.

The defeat put Al Shorta in a precarious position as they remained in 11th place with only two points but head coach Ahmed Salah refused to concede that their hopes had been dashed.  

"We played a good match but we missed many opportunities during the match with individual mistakes causing goals against us, however, these mistakes are a natural part of football,” said Salah.

"The responsibility of this result is on everyone in the team, sometimes football is unfair, as we did not deserve to lose today. Despite this result, our hopes of competing and qualifying are still alive, as we still have three matches ahead of us.”