07 March 2012
BEIRUT: Last season’s Lebanese League runners-up Safa began their 2012 AFC campaign with a deserved 2-1 win over Yemeni side Al-Tilal at Beirut’s Cite Sportive Tuesday evening, though the victory was less comfortable than it should have been.
The AFC is Asian football’s equivalent of the Europa League: A second-tier continental competition, but a continental competition nonetheless. With Lebanese football enjoying an increasingly high profile in recent months, a strong showing from both sides this year will help cement the country’s newfound status as a regional player.
In front of a crowd of a few hundred home supporters and an enthusiastic group of Al-Tilal fans, Safa collected the required win against a weaker Yemeni side.
Yet as the scoreline would suggest, the home team failed to fully capitalize on the gulf in class between the two sides, relying on a couple of moments of quality from forwards Mahmoud al-Zoughbi and Rony Azar to secure the win. Speaking after the game, coach Akram Salman acknowledged that his side had underperformed.
“Yes, we weren’t at our normal level today. But I have to congratulate Al-Tilal for the quality of their performance,” he said.
Safa’s cause wasn’t helped by the early loss to injury of captain and playmaker Khodr Salameh. A bigger problem, however, was the home side’s near-compulsive obsession with the long ball. The prematch team sheets had shown Safa lining up with five forwards and only two men in the midfield, and the Beirut side played according to that formation, with Lebanon defender Ali Al-Saadi in particular time and again looking to play in right-winger Mohammad Haidar with a speculative cross-field pass over the Al-Tilal defense.
Once Al-Tilal had become wise to the ploy, it was clear that Safa would require a bit more inventiveness to break the deadlock. That moment came on the 20th minute when Azar pulled away from his marker at a corner and crashed the ball home from 12 yards with a beautifully hit volley.
Having taken the lead, Safa let the game drift, content to dominate possession without creating any chances of note. It was an approach that would come back to bite them on the stroke of halftime, when Al-Tilal captain Khaled Baleid surged through a big hole in the Safa defense and slotted cooly past Ziad Samad, whose only act of note up until that point had been a wave to his admirers in the stands.
The longer the second half went on, the more anxious the Safa supporters became, with the prospect of two dropped points looking an increasingly likely possibility. Though the Lebanese began to use the long ball more sparingly, often good approach play was wasted by a poor final ball with Mohammad Haidar the biggest culprit – the Lebanese international twice blasted over when a pass would have been a better option.
Al-Tilal, urged on by their indefatigable fans, were beginning to believe that they could get something from the game, and ought to have taken the lead on the hour mark, when Abdulqader al-Roatde shot wide with the goal at his mercy.
It was to be a fatal miss, as three minutes later Safa finally made their superior class pay. Zoughbi, a constant menace down the left-hand side, skipped past Karam Riyadh down before pulling the ball back from the byline for Azar, who converted with the ease of a natural goalscorer. It was a classy goal, and, in a game of few real chances, one that deserved to clinch the three points for Safa.
Copyright The Daily Star 2012.
