Al Wahda head coach Henk ten Cate hails FC Goa’s Dheeraj Singh for his heroics

FC Goa have started their AFC Champions League journey with two back to back draws against superior opponents. This time they held UAE’s Al Wahda to a 0-0 score but they had multiple chances to steal all three points from the fixture.

Goa goalkeeper Dheeraj Singh again came up with his heroics to keep the Gaurs in the game and then in injury time saved a great header from point-blank range to help them earn a point. Therefore Al Wahda head coach Henk ten Cate hailed the young custodian for his efforts throughout the game.

“They (FC Goa) have a very good goalkeeper (Dheeraj Singh). We lost a lot of easy opportunities. In the first half of the match, we got three-to-four very good chances and we had to score them. The second half of the match, we controlled the match completely until the last minute,” the Dutchman pinpointed the great injury-time save from Dheeraj to deny Omar Khribin.

“If we had scored up to 50% of the available chances, it would have been a very good result, but we wasted a lot of easy opportunities,” he highlighted at the post-match press conference.

The Dutch tactician also admitted that the humidity of Goa has affected his team’s overall gameplay. His complaint was similar to Al Rayyan’s head coach Laurent Blanc who also complained about the humidity. He also added how the weather is not helpful to the players during the holy month of Ramadan. However, he is now focused to perform well in the remaining matches.

“Humidity is undoubtedly an influencing factor because players lose a lot of fluids. Undoubtedly, teams with players who are fasting will face the same problem,” he complained.

“We are trying our best to make the players look their best in these circumstances. Now we are working on recovering the players and we will make preparations for the next match directly. There is always a place for development and in these matches, we talk to the players and we are still in the competition as we have four matches. I hope that luck will be on our side during the upcoming matches,” ten Cate concluded.

Al Wahda started their AFC Champions League campaign with a 0-1 loss against Persepolis and then followed it by a disappointing performance against FC Goa. Now they will face Al Rayyan and will be eager to get their first win. Meanwhile after two goalless draws Juan Ferrando’s men will be gearing up to face Iranian outfit and last season’s runners up, Persepolis.