Saudi Arabia (KSA)    

RIYADH – Saudi Arabia coach Helio dos Anjos felt that his side were much improved as a goal in each half byRedha Tukar lifted them to a 2-1 win over Lebanon at King Fahad International Stadium on Saturday.

Tukar opened the scoring in stoppage time at the end of the first half and added a second on the hour mark before Lebanon responded through Mohammed Ghaddar shortly before the end of the game.

While delighted with the win, which sent the Saudis up to nine points in Group Four, dos Anjos was even more pleased with the performance of his players.

The balance of the team has been restored by the return of Saud Kariri to midfield after recovering from injury, said dos Anjos.

He did good job during the match and I hope we can do better in the next fixture with the return of (striker) Yasser Al Qahtani and our other injured players.

In general, I think we played a very good match if we compare it with our previous matches against Singapore and Uzabkistan.

The performance of my squad in gradually improving. It is a true that a defender got our goals tonight but I think that our strikers put in great effort and helped to create a number of scoring chances.

We may have scored four in our first game against Lebanon but this match was better than the earlier one because it felt as if our performance had improved.

Lebanon are a great team and they made it a difficult match for us.

Lebanon coach Emile Rustom admitted that this team were simply beaten by a better side.

We lost to a strong team and I would like to say congratulations to the Saudis,said Rustom.

We do not have any chance of reaching the final round but personally I hope that the Saudis top the group and do better in the next stage.

I have a major problem with some players in my team. Some of them dont care about national team duty, some need more drive and some were careless. I think the reason for this is that we do not have professional players.