Qatar midfielder: 'The Vietnamese team played with all their heart and passion'

"I think we started well and deserved to open the scoring. But then the Vietnamese team played with all their heart and passion. They equalised twice. This surprised us, even though we knew they had done the same thing before," Al Emadi said after the match.

Qatar opened the scoring in the 39th minute thanks to Akram Afif's successful penalty kick. But in the 69th minute, Quang Hai took advantage of the opponent's defender's indecisive clearance, kicking the ball with his right foot close to the goal to equalize the score. With only three minutes left in regulation time, Qatar took the lead for the second time, but it only took two more minutes for Quang Hai to bring the match back to the starting line with a shot that curved the ball around the opponent's goalkeeper and into the net.

In the 30 minutes of extra time, no more goals were scored, forcing the two teams to decide the winner by a penalty shootout. Quang Hai missed the first kick, but Tien Dung saved two of his opponent's 11m kicks to help Vietnam win 4-3, entering the final of the U23 Asian tournament.

Losing to Vietnam, Qatar will compete for third place. This is an opportunity for this team to pay back the debt to Korea in the semi-finals of the 2016 tournament, when they played at home.

“We will give our all in the third-place match and get a good result. The team will try to learn from the mistakes in the match against Vietnam,"Al Emadi emphasized. "We will continue to try to have a better future. Congratulations to Vietnam. We started well and scored the opening goal but were unlucky in this tournament."