Qatar to begin quests for FIBA Asia Cup 2021 ticket on Saturday as Doha hosts regional qualifier
After months of waiting Qatar’s national basketball men’s team will step on the court this week to continue its effort to qualify at the final phase of Asia Cup 2021.
Under the guidance of new head coach Miodrag Perisic, Qatar will go for its first victory in the competition at the upcoming “FIBA Asia CUP 2021 Qualifier – Window 2”, which will be hosted at Al Gharafa Basketball Arena on Saturday (November 28) and Monday (November 30) up against rivals Syria and Saudi Arabia respectively.
Assistant to the Serbian head coach and a former legend of Qatari basketball, Hachim Zaidan was also the interim coach of the men’s team during the summer, once Qatar Basketball Federation received… the green light to start training from the Ministry of Health.
“We started our first phase of preparation in July after we received the ok to start practicing with the national team. We had with us 18 players and we completed 44 practices strictly following the health protocol. It was carefully planned by our federation and the result was really good, it benefited all of us”, coach Hachim Zaidan said.
“We had our plan with fitness coach Vasilis Mitsopoulos (Greece) focusing on putting the players on shape first, to make sure nobody got injured after this long absence from court. We had to be very careful as we were starting from zero action for four months.
Gradually week after week the players were showing improvement, so we added basketball: Some drills to give them again a sense of basketball and for them to get the sense of the court. Their improvement was evident at the fitness tests.
After our… training camp was finished, the players were ready. They returned to their clubs, played two Cups (Qatar Cup and Amir Cup) and they did really fine”.
A new beginning
Resuming his role as first assistant to head coach Perisic, coach Hachim Zaidan explains how the team is functioning now.
“We have started the 2nd phase of our program under the supervision of coach “Misha”. On to… serious business now, as we want to win both games on our home court. The team is doing fine.
We played two friendly games against local clubs. The first one was against Al Wakra, the players were very serious, we got great feedback. Another friendly match with Al Ahli followed, a team with young, fast players to push us and speed our game. The team now is fully prepared to play these games and we know what we need to do.
Under the new coach we play better, faster, organized basketball, close to the European style basketball . We have a lot of young players, so this is how we should play: Faster, control the tempo, be more aggressive. We have improved a lot since the coach joined the team. We hope and we believe that we can win both matches."
The schedule of Group E:
Saturday, November 28:
Iran – Saudi Arabia (16:00 pm)
Qatar – Syria (19:00 pm)
Monday, November 30:
Syria – Iran (16:00 pm)
Qatar – Saudi Arabia (19:00 pm)
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