By Sports Reporter/Doha

It was an eventful day in the Qatar Stars League with the highlight being Al Wakrah’s 6-1 shock thrashing of Al Gharafa and defending champions Lekhwiya winning 2-1 against Al Sailiya to keep up the pressure on current table toppers Al Sadd who play today.
Wakrah had had only two wins this season before yesterday’s match, whereas Gharafa are one of the stronger teams and are currently third in the standings. But things didn’t go according to script and Wakrah have their striker Sebastian Saez to thank who scored a hattrick to inspire what is one of the biggest wins.
The tone was set when Saez gave Wakrah the lead in the very first minute of the game. The lead was doubled through Johar Abdul Kaabi in the fourth minute and in the 13th minute Saez scored his second. Gharafa didn’t recover from this initial assault and though there seemed to be a semblance of a comeback when they scored though Nicolas Fedor in the 22nd minute, it was just a false alarm. Wakrah found the back of the net twice more in the first half, in the 27th minute through Adel Ahmad Mohmad and then Saez completed his hattrick in the 41st minute.
Gharafa couldn’t come up with any response in the second half either and only ended up conceding in the 85th minute though Ahmad Ali Khil. Wakrah coach Algerian Nourdine Zakri will be extremely pleased with his team’s dominance while Gharafa coach  Marcos Paqueta will wondering how could his team fail in such embarrassing fashion.

clinical win by lekhwiya
Defending champions Lekhwiya produced another clinical performance with goals in the either half – in the 51st minute through Andres Quintana and in the 59th minute through substitute Karim Boudaif – to defeat hapless Sailiya who still haven’t managed to reproduce their form from last season when they ended up finishing fourth. The mass exodus of players definitely hasn’t helped.
The other highlight yesterday was the high-intensity clash between Umm Salal and Al Khor which ended, eventually, in a 3-3 draw. Khor seemed to have gotten the three points in the bag when they were 3-1 up till as late as the 82nd minute. Goals from William Souza (11th minute), Reza Najafi (16th minute)  and Julio Cesar Donacimento (82nd minute) would have led Khor to believe that the result was done and dusted with. But that was when Salal chose to wake up. They had clawed one goal back through Abdulgadir Ilyas in the 76th minute. But then wily Tuncay Sanli scored in the 87th minute to give the team hope and then the momentum firmly swung when Jermie Aliadiere scored the equaliser late into injury time – in the 94th minute. The only sour point was the red card for Ilyas in the 96th minute just when it looked like Salal would pull off an incredible win.
In the other matches Qatar SC were held 2-2 by Al Arabi and Al Shahania shocked Al Ahli with a 1-0. Ahli will be disappointed with this loss because a win would have seen them jump to third in the standings.