Lebanese national basketball team coach Jad Al-Haj expressed great joy at the national team’s exciting and important victory over the Philippines, 85-81.

The Lebanese team is one win away from official qualification for the 2023 World Cup and could solve the problem if they beat India in their next match on Monday night.

After the match, Al-Hajj said, “We started the game poorly, but we were able to come back and take control after we understood the style of play of Jordan Clarkson, the first star of the Philippines team.”

The coach added, “We focused on the opponent and forced him to miss three-pointers and also forced him to commit 21 passing violations.”

When asked about Karim Zenon’s role in making up for Sergio Darvish’s absence, the coach praised the performance of Karim and the rest of the players and confirmed that the team had been working on a plan to stop Clarkson and were ultimately successful despite scoring 28 points.

As for the national team star Wael Arakji, he highly appreciated the performance of everyone in this match and stressed that all the teams that come to Lebanon should respect the team and play in this atmosphere and in the manner imposed by the Lebanese team.

To the question of the correspondent of “Sport” Issa Yasin about the next step of the national team, Arakdzhi said: “You should address this issue to the Lebanese Federation. We give everything we have for the national team and we deserve more respect.”

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Wael added: “Players in Asia get the opportunity to play in any of the Asian leagues as an Asian player, which is something we don’t get in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.