Bahrain coach admits challenge to control players’ emotions

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain head coach Aron Kristjansson admitted yesterday that it proved challenging to keep his team focused against Egypt after learning of their historic qualification for the quarter-finals at the Olympics prior to the opening throw-off.

The former Iceland international was quoted as saying: “That was a problem for the game – of course not a problem for us because we are very proud of that result and that’s a very big thing for us to qualify for the quarter-finals. “Bahrain, the best position in the World Championship is number 20, so this is a huge, huge thing for us.

“What happened in the warm-up just before the game when we won [the quarter-final berth], of course, they cannot maybe control their emotions and the pressure we had been building up, the tension building up for the game just fell down. “It’s like there was no air in their balloon.

This is a big thing. We go for the top eight and this is maybe for some other teams like winning a title, so it is a huge thing but now we have to control our feelings.

We have to recover and try to give France a good match, or the next opponent a good match.” Kristjansson described the memorable moment they knew of their qualification even further, saying: “With five minutes left of the game I walked away from the television.

I didn’t want to see it because of this game – I wanted to keep my focus on this game. And my assistant coach and some players who were not playing the game, the manager, came running to the warm-up hall.

They were just running, cheering with joy. “Of course it was a big thing and they just wanted to run inside to tell the players, so I was just trying to keep them calm, controlled because I knew we would have a very difficult game against Egypt.”