Qatar is heading for a CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-final after seeing off El Salvador in a nail-biter.

“Getting to a semi-final in this kind of tournament is historic for this team,” Qatar head coach Felix Sanchez said. “They have a great mentality, a great personality. Playing this type of comeptition isn’t easy. I believe that for 60 minutes, we controlled the match. The last half-hour, they were attacking all the time. They scored two goals but the team was able to recover and was able to resist after giving away two goals, the environment was complicated but they reacted.”

The Middle Eastern side scored twice in the first ten minutes, with both Almoez Ali and Abdulaziz Hatem ending up on the scoresheet.

In the second half, Ali tucked away a penalty to put his side up by three, presumably sealing the match.

El Salvador had other plans, though. Joaquin Rivas scored two goals in four minutes to give his side a further twenty four to find an equalizer. However, they were unable to bring the scores level.

“We can’t start playing only in the second half,” El Salvador coach Hugo Perez said. “We can’t wait until we are behind. These are things that we have to learn. We have to be more focused because against a team like theirs or any other team that has a lot of experience, it’ll cost you. But our reaction for the second half was very positive.”

In the end, Qatar’s coach put the difference late on down to a disparity in rest days heading into the match.

“The fact of having only three days of rest was a disadvantage,” Sanchez said. “The other team had five days. It’s difficult for me to understand that this kind of thing happens in this competition. Such a difference between three and five, especially considering that we are at the end of the season and the players are tired, but the players were great.”

Now, Qatar will face either the United States or Jamaica in a semi-final in Texas.