Lebanon on brink of qualifying glory

Lebanon coach Theo Bucker says UAE football is ‘light years ahead’ of his adopted nation.

Bucker, however, has been delighted with Lebanon’s rise in the past six months as they prepare to face UAE in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday in their final third round 2014 World Cup qualifier.

If Lebanon gain a result, they will seal their place in the fourth and final round of World Cup qualifying through Asia for the first time.

German-born Bucker told the Beirut Daily Star he’s been delighted to see Lebanon’s emergence, after losing their opening match 6-0 to Korea, before recording famous wins over Kuwait and the Taeguk Warriors.

“We in Lebanon are still wondering about the change in the last six months,” Bucker said.

“Nobody was noticing us now we are looked at in a completely different way.”

“Personally I’m very proud of this. I was always convinced about the quality of our players. We were good enough and lucky enough in our qualification group to go out and to achieve all of these good results.”

And Bucker said the UAE, who are pointless in the group, had an organisation which was ‘light years ahead’ of Lebanon, but still remained confident of a win.

“We are trying to get a very good result, especially if you are comparing the two organisations, football in the UAE is light years ahead of Lebanese football,” Bucker said.

Bucker does have a few headaches for the UAE clash with star man Roda Antar out suspended.

“He is the boss. Every player looks up to him, he is their leader,” Bucker said, before admitting he was pondering using either Mohammad Chammas or young star Nader Matar to replace him.

“If we play Nader we will make no mistakes, but he is young and Abbas Atwi has that something extra.”

Bucker also indicated he would select Sweden-based Abbas Hassan in goal, over regular Ziad Samad.

“(Hassan) plays for a team that is in the top Swedish League so his background, his training, his experience is definitely a bit better than Ziad.”

“There is nothing against Ziad as a goalkeeper but in this special moment, you have to take the best, end of story,” he said.