Abu Dhabi: Son Heung-min not having scored is not a concern for head coach Paulo Bento as long as Korea Republic keep finding the net in the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019.
The two-time champions face Qatar in a mouth-watering quarterfinal at the Zayed Sports City Stadium on Friday and Bento said what he expects to see from the Taeguk Warriors is them creating chances and putting them away. In Qatar, the East Asians will be facing the team with the highest number of goals scored thus far in the competition and Bento said it is crucial for his team to put their chances away against Felix Sanchez’s impressive side
“I am not concerned that Son hasn’t scored, it isn’t mandatory that he scores for the national team,” said Bento.
“For us, what is most important is that we score in every game in this competition. I think we should have scored more goals as we created a lot of situations in almost all the games we played.
“It is not important who scores, what is most important is that we create opportunities and score.”
After cruising into the knockout stage with three wins in Group C, Korea Republic needed extra-time to overcome a spirited Bahrain in their Round of 16 tie and Bento said he expects an even tougher encounter against Qatar.
“It will be a very difficult game. They are very good offensively and defensively. This is a team that has worked together for a long time with a coach (Felix Sanchez) who knows the players very well.
“They have players who are very good technically, their strikers and wingers are also very fast. It will not just be about Almoez Ali (leading scorer with seven goals) as Qatar are a very strong unit as a team.”
Bento said Korea Republic need to assert their style if they want to contain Qatar.
“We must play as we like to play. We must control the ball, dominate in the offensive part of our midfield. There must be good reaction when we lose the ball and we must also control the space behind our defensive line.” Bento added that he didn’t think fatigue would be a problem for his side.
“What we are going to do today in training is try to recover all the players as well as possible. We have information on Qatar that we will share with the players during training but it will be practice without intensity.
“Tomorrow, of course, we hope all of them are in a good condition. It is not the first time they will play after just three days. Both teams are in the same condition and that is why we have to control the initiative of the game the way we like it.”
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