The players respected the game plan - Gehad Arafa

Egypt head coach Gehad Arafa says his players respected his game plan in Friday’s convincing 4-0 thrashing of Libya in Group B of the TotalEnergies CAF Futsal AFCON in Rabat.

Mohamed Abdelrazek Koki bagged a brace for Egypt while Mohamed Said Mohamed and Alaa Eissa also registered their names on the scoresheet.

“We started very better than our opponents because we knew their strengths and weaknesses and the players respected our game plan,” said Arafa.

The experienced coach was a member of the Pharaohs squads that won three consecutive CAF Futsal AFCON titles between 1996 and 2004.

The two teams played the final of the 2008 edition which Libya won and Arafa admitted playing against Libya is always special.

“It was the repeat of the 2008 final which Libya won back then and that team was very strong with a very good generation,” Gehad recalled.

“Today was like a final before the actual final with respect to Morocco, Egypt against Libya is a special match.”

Egypt have played in very final of the competition winning the first three editions and finishing runners-up in the last three tournaments.

“Before we used to play individually but now we have more variety to have more solutions. We must develop our style of play,” he concluded.

Libya coach Ricardo Iñuguez admitted his team struggled to keep up the Pharaohs on the transitions.

“We played with a very good 1-2-1 especially with the pivot and we defended well but one of the problems was in the transitions,” said the Mediterranean Knights coach.

“We had chances to score in the beginning of the first half. The team worked well but we failed to take our chances.Even with the defeat there are positives to take from it and we will try to work on them for the next match.”

Ricardo’s next match is against Mauritania on Sunday, 14 April at 20:00 GMT after Egypt face Namibia at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Hall in the Moroccan capital.