Though short in preparation, Azkals coach Thomas Dooley said that the team is ready for Bahrain when the two teams take the pitch on Thursday at the Philippine Sports Stadium.
With Iain Ramsay, Javier Patino, Jerry Lucena, and Stephen Palla coming in less than a week before the first game of the Asian qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the American tactician is already happy with what he saw with his group in the squad’s first complete training session on Tuesday.
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“It’s great and it’s what we expect from them. Everybody works hard. Everybody’s doing their best,” Dooley said.
He is also confident that the players who came late could quickly adapt to the squad.
“Those are the ones who are dealing with professional teams and they know how it works and what needs to be done to adjust.”
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From the Inquirer resident football expert Cedelf Tupas, who has covered the national team the past decade.
The former United States team skipper also said that he understands the things the team hds to deal with in the buildup for the Asian qualifiers, but as good soldiers, the Azkals just have to make things work in their quest of advancing to the next round.
“I have to because I cannot be questioning everything with all that we have. I know we’re not Germany, Italy, or England or whatever. Something like that would never happen. But we have to deal with it and we have to do our best. That’s what we do and the focus for this one game is to put everything in the way we want to play and all the little side things that is not 100-percent right, that’s ok,” he said. “It can’t work all the time.
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You will make some mistakes and we talked about it, tried to do it differently, and that’s how it is.”
And with all of that accounted for, Dooley is challenging his players to assess themselves and perform their best come Thursday.
“Everybody should think about his game and bring 100-percent of what you have because what you have in each position, you have to have a different skill level and different skills and that’s how we created this team,” he said. “The only thing we ask from the players is to do the best that you can. Whatever you can do best, bring it. Bring it collectively and we’ll be successful. That’s how we’re going to play. Great unique players, they can play each other and if everybody works hard, we’ll be ok.”