Riffa coach praises players for achieving historic domestic double

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Riffa head coach Ali Ashoor has praised his players for their unwavering commitment and professionalism over the past national football season, in which they secured a historic double after winning both His Majesty the King’s Cup and the Nasser bin Hamad Bahrain Premier League title.

Ashoor says that he had stressed the importance of sacrifice and hard work from the very start of their 2020/2021 campaign, and his team did well to respond. “I always told my players that when we sacrifice, when we work hard, play hard, focus, and put our plan and target, we will get what we aim for,” Ashoor explains.

“All the sweat in the training sessions, all the running, all the fights we fought—when you do something special like that, you will always succeed. “But at the same time, my players are great people, great players.

They have focused 100 per cent, they are mentally tough, and their lifestyles are very professional; they eat healthily, they follow their nutrition, they sleep early, they do their recovery, and all these things which they have to do themselves, they are doing them 100 per cent.

“I’m very lucky to coach these players and we have to work harder in the next season because all the clubs will come to fight us.” Riffa’s success this past season had earned them their seventh King’s Cup trophy as well as their 13th league crown.

Ashoor acknowledges, however, that the team felt pressure as the campaign started to deliver some positive results, being one of the favourites in the Kingdom with a squad stacked with Bahrain national team players.

Nonetheless, Riffa was able to wrap the season up with a near-perfect record. They swept through a tough schedule in the King’s Cup and ran away with the league crown in an 18-game campaign that saw them win the title by 10 points from their closest rivals, having taken 14 victories, drawn thrice and lost just once. “We started the season with a very, very tough target, since we signed some national team players like Ali Madan, Mahdi Humaidan, Jassim Al Shaikh and Ahmed Abdulla, so the expectation of us went high and this put a lot of pressure on us,” Ashoor recalls. “But our players were very mentally tough and focused.

“We got points in each match, we took it match by match, three points by three points, till we got the championship before the end of the league by two matches, which has not happened in Bahrain in a long time. “We also tried our best in the King’s Cup to be focused because it is a knockout; 90 minutes, without the extra time and going straight to the penalties. All the players put a target to win the King’s Cup, and at the end we got it. “We started slowly in the beginning of the season and then match by match we improved a lot and we got a lot of confidence.