Bahrain coach circumspect on chances

AFC – MANAMA, Bahrain’s English coach Peter John Taylor has tamped down media suggestions that the West Asians are favourites to advance out of their group into the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers final round.

The Bahrainis were placed alongside Iran, Qatar and Indonesia in the draw for the third round (round-robin, home and away) on Saturday.

“It’s a tough group, each of our opponents are good teams,” Taylor told the local media.

“I don’t know how anybody can classify us amongst the favourites. Right now, the FIFA World Rankings have Iran and Qatar ahead of us, and I’ve also been given mixed feedback from different people around the team; some say it’s an easy group, while others say it’s going to be very difficult, so not even they can decide on what to expect.

“The main thing for us right now is that we focus on being the best prepared we can be. We must respect all our opposition, and hopefully we can go out and do well and try our best to qualify for the next phase.”

The Englishman added: “Training been very good so far. We’ve had at least 10 sessions here with our players and the fitness level is now much better than when we started.”

Bahrain captain Mohamed Salmeen said the pool was very tough.

“I think our group is very hard and it will be very difficult to qualify from this group. But we are used to playing difficult matches in difficult groups and we have qualified twice for the play-offs,” said Salmeen, referring to his side’s close brush with the World Cup Finals in 2006 and 2010 when they lost in the confederation-level play-offs.

“We want to do again what we did before, and this time we want to reach the World Cup.

“Iran is one of the big teams in Asia, while Bahrain and Qatar are advancing and producing very good performance lately, while everyone should respect Indonesia who will be strong competitors,” added Salmeen.