While happy with the 2-0 win over Bahrain Uzbekistan coach Robert Gay knows he faces an injury headache ahead of the quarter-finals.TASHKENT – Uzbekistan coach Robert Gay was left with mixed emotions after his side’s 2-0 win over Bahrain secured their place in the quarter-finals of the AFC U-16 Championship on Wednesday.
Bobur Abdurakhmonov and Ayubhon Gapparov scored a goal in each half to steer Uzbekistan to their second group win as they joined Iran in the quarter-finals of the competition.
But loss of several key players took the shine off the victory for the Uzbekistan coach.
"We have a long injury list and things don't look promising for our match in the quarter-finals," said Gay.
"We will also miss Akramjon Bahritdinov who is suspended as he received his second yellow card in the tournament today.
"Egor Krimets is out as he wasn't feeling well just five minutes before replacing Bahritdinov, who was injured. We have three days to prepare for the quarter-finals match and hopefully things will improve.
"We had a lot of chances tonight just like we did in the previous matches. However, we couldn't score from all the chances that we had and we must work on this issue.
"We are going to watch the game between Syria and Korea Republic and we will see who we will meet in the quarter-finals. We have enough time to prepare our team for that match and hopefully things will improve."
Bahrain’s Tunisian coach Hosni Zouaoui pointed to mistakes made by his players as the reason the Uzbeks took the win.
"We conceded two easy goals as the Uzbek players were not in a good situation to score," said Zouaoui.
"Uzbekistan took the lead in a critical time and this changed our plans for the game.
"We were planning not to concede any goals in the first half as this would force Uzbekistan to get back to their area. We wanted to make our move in the second half but this didn't happen as we conceded another easy goal.
"Our players were not in a confident mood before the game as they were a little bit afraid. I think that what we lacked today was experience as this was the key reason behind our defeat."
Source:The AFC.com
