Rayan Hameed, Haitham Asiri and a brace from Aiman Yahya secured the defending champions a 4-2 win over Tajikistan with Al Shehri adamant that the best is yet to come from the West Asian side.

“The first game, as always, is difficult but it’s a good result for us,” said Al Shehri. “Our performance was good. We made some mistakes but we will correct this in the coming matches.

“Our goal coming here was to qualify for the final. But in this kind of competition, we have to take it step by step.”

Having gone through their title-winning campaign in 2022 without conceding a single goal, it came as a surprise that Tajikistan were able to twice breach the Saudi Arabia backline, with Al Shehri admitting he will work on this ahead of their remaining matches in Group C against Thailand and Iraq.

“We didn’t want to concede. We cannot be satisfied with it. They were easy goals and we could have won without conceding. For sure, we need to work a little bit more in this area.

“Yes, we scored four but we also want to keep clean sheets but the first game in a tournament can sometimes be a bit jittery.”

Tajikistan showed fighting spirit to first draw level at 1-1 through Ruslan Khailoev before Rustam Soirov scored the second as they heaped the pressure on Saudi Arabia late on.

However, having been outdone by three counter attacking moves that saw his defence in sixes and sevens, head coach Mubin Ergashev had regrets that his plansdid not come to fruition.

“Congratulations to the Saudi Arabia national team for the win,” said Ergashev. “They are a very good team that are well-balanced in each line.

“The gap between our defence and midfield was very big and the opponent used this distance and scored their goals.

“Unfortunately, the plans that we devised in training weren’t used fully by the players, who also did not completely follow the instructions that we’ve given them.”

Saudi Arabia will take on Thailand on Friday with Tajikistan to face Iraq.