Despite booking a place in the final round of the World Cup qualifiers, Saudi Arabia will be looking for revenge when it plays Uzbekistan at the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh on Sunday (9 P.M.). Uzbekistan, which was the first team to advance from Group D, beat Saudi Arabia 3-0 in their first-leg match in Tashkent in March. The match will decide the leader of the group as Uzbekistan sits on top with 15 points, three clear of the three-time Asian Cup winner Saudi Arabia. Saudi team coach Nasser Al-Johar believes that Uzbekistan match will not be an easy one, but insisted his squad is ready for revenge. “It is an important match in our campaign. I will not overload my players or ask them to score certain number of goals but we will be going after all the three points,” the Saudi coach said. Al-Johar, who replaced Brazilian Helios Cesar dos Anjos recently, led his squad to a 2-0 win over Singapore in his first outing with the team. “I will start the match with the same squad that played in Singapore. We will play attacking soccer from the beginning,” he said. Despite the circumstance that enveloped the team in their last appearance, Al-Johar is struggling to fix some technical issues ahead of the final round. “We are short of playmakers. In our last match I assigned striker Saad Al-Harthi to take care of this task. He succeeded in his new position and made five scoring chances. The strikers scored one goal on those chances,” he said. Saudi Arabia will again be without some key players including 2007 AFC player of the year Yasser Al-Qahtani, who needs more rest to recover. “We have a few injuries due to the heavy season in Saudi Arabia,” Al-Johar said. The coach said that he already started preparing the team for the upcoming fixtures in the final round. “I have talked to the team doctor and he advised me to give more rest to striker Yasser Al-Qahtani, Omar Al-Ghamdi and Naif Al-Qaadi. It is good that we can spare them since we have already qualified for the next round,” he said. He is in fact not worried about Qahtani's absence as half of his side's goals in the qualifiers came through defenders and midfielders. “Netting is not only strikers' task and now I am working on a plan to enable all players to advance in a technical way and score,” he said. Al-Johar noted that after the Uzbekistan match, Saudis will have a 33-day vacation before they start preparing for the final round of the qualifiers with a training camp in the Czech Republic. Goalkeeper Waleed Abdullah missed Thursday's training session after a stomach ache but he is expected to play in the match on Sunday. Khaled Aziz, however, will be out after collecting his second Yellow Card. __
