Bahrain coach Milan Macala knows that the hard work is ahead of his team if they are to remain a hope of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.

After defeating Qatar 1-0 on Wednesday night in Manama, Bahrain moved to outright third place on the Group One table but are well behind top two Japan and Australia.

Their only chance of qualifying for South Africa is to finish third in their group and then playing an Oceania nation to progress through.

"Our win today didn't give us the third place in the group as we still have two matches and we must have good results in these games in order to win the third place and qualify to the play-offs," he said.

"Qatar were affected by the several defeats that they had recently and they went into the game in looking to win but we managed to score from one of the chances that we had in the game and got the three points.

"The win today didn't seal the third place for us and we must put a lot of effort in the next matches to win third place."