Dubai: Al Jazira coach Henk ten Cate described his side’s 6-0 capitulation to Al Wahda in the President’s Cup quarter-final on Wednesday as a wake-up call for his players.

Sebastian Tagliabue scored twice in two minutes and Balazs Dzsudzsak got a third within four minutes of Tagliabue’s opener to make it 3-0 just before the half hour.

Dzsudzsak then got his second just after the interval before Mohammad Al Menhali made it five after the hour. Tagliabue completed his hat-trick with nine minutes to spare.

The defeat came as a shock to Al Jazira who were not only President’s Cup holders but also current leaders of the Arabian Gulf League.

“[Expletive] happens,” said Ten Cate after the game. “It was a total failure of the entire team and I take full responsibility for this defeat. I hope this is a wake-up call for everybody.

“This is a big lesson for us, sometimes it’s difficult to explain but if you work in football you’ll understand how a game like this can actually help you.

“It was a hard lesson but one that we hope to learn from quickly because in five days we face Al Ahli in the semi-final of the Arabian Gulf Cup. January will be a decisive month for us, but this was just an incident.”

Al Wahda manager Javier Aguirre agreed that the result was a one-off, but added that it would be a major boon for confidence heading back into the second half of the Arabian Gulf League, where his side are currently ambling back in fifth, eight points behind Al Jazira.

“This score is just an accident, it’s not the real difference between these two teams,” he said. “Al Jazira are top of the league, so this is a very strange result, but to be fair my players deserved to win, they played well, ran all day and fought for every ball.

“We need this kind of confidence, sometimes we play well but lose or draw when we don’t deserve a bad score. We played much better than the other team today and this is a good result for the confidence of my players to keep playing well. Now we have to recover this points gap in the league with the four teams ahead of us.”

Al Wahda’s next match is at home in the league to Hatta on January 14.

“The next President’s Cup match isn’t until March (versus Sharjah who beat Al Wasl 4-2 in Wednesday’s other quarter), so today we forget the President’s Cup and focus all our energy on the next league game at home to Hatta.

“It will be very tough, they are well organised and improving. We want to have a better second round than the first, so we need to start winning. We drew against Hatta away and missed many chances so now we need to give them more respect, take three points and start climbing.”

In Wednesday’s other quarter-final Sharjah beat Al Wasl 4-2 at Al Shabab Stadium. Gelmin Rivas and Omar Juma had Sharjah 2-0 up at half-time. Rivas then added two in the second half to complete his hat-trick before Ronaldo Mendes and Hassan Mohammad pulled two consolation goals back for Al Wasl.