Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Hebron: Palestine’s Ahli Al Khalil advanced to the group stage of the 2016 AFC Cup on Tuesday when a solitary goal from Mahmoud Wadi earned them victory over Khujand from Tajikistan in their playoff meeting.
Victory means Ahli Al Khalil will feature in Group D of this season’s continental championship, where they will face Bahrain’s Al Muharraq, Fanja from Oman and Syrian side Al Jaish, winners of the inaugural AFC Cup in 2004.
“I’m happy that we could advance to the group stage of the competition,” said Ahli Al Khalil coach Ayman Sandouqa. “We put in a lot of effort in order to continue in the AFC Cup and I want to thank the players and the fans for their support tonight.
“We were hoping to qualify in order to have two teams from Palestine in the group stage for the first time ever. We will try to fix the mistakes that we made in the match tonight in order to be prepared for the group stage.”
Wadi claimed the only goal of the game in the 21st minute, when he had the time and space to pick his spot after good work down the right from Khaldun Halman set him up to score from close range.
The goal was just reward for an Ahli Al Khalil side that had dominated proceedings in the opening quarter of the game and the Palestinian side continued in a similar vein in the second half but were unable to add to the score.
Despite their inability to add to their total, Ahli Al Khalil ensured they advanced to the next phase of the competition and they will kick off the group stage when they travel to Bahrain to face Al Muharraq on February 24.
“I’m satisfied with the performance of the team although we were hoping to have a better result and we could have done better,” said Khujand coach Numonjon Yusupov. “I want to congratulate our opponents who had a good match and deserved to win.
“We wanted to win and qualify to the group stage but the players were unsettled by the early goal which cost us the win tonight.”