Luca Brecel has ‘every chance’ in his first World Championship final, believes Mark Allen, although he warns the Belgian that Mark Selby ‘always finds a way’.
Brecel produced a monumental comeback to beat Si Jiahui in his semi-final, bouncing back from 14-5 down to win 17-15 against the Chinese debutant.
It was the same scoreline in Selby’s win over Allen, although it was a very different game which finished at around 12.45am on the day that the final starts.
Allen scrapped it out with Selby over four sessions, eventually coming up just short, but feels Brecel has ‘every chance’ of getting to 18 frames in the final.
‘It depends if he’s still in the bar or not, if you believe everything you read,’ joked Allen. ‘He’s got every chance. He’s playing free-flowing, attacking snooker. But Selby always finds a way doesn’t he?’
After their quarter-final contest, John Higgins described Selby as a ‘monster’ on the snooker table, but while he couldn’t quite overcome the four-time champion, Allen didn’t feel that in their match.
‘I get what John means, but I just didn’t find that over the four sessions,’ he said. ‘I just felt like I underperformed and made it quite easy for him.’
The lengthy affair between Allen and Selby wasn’t always the prettiest, but the Pistol felt that was mainly down to top class safety play from both players as they dug in and tried to avoid giving each other chances.
‘There was a lot of long frames, obviously, but I think a lot of that came from really good safety from both of us,’ he said. ‘Obviously there was a few frames that went a bit negative and the balls got tied up, but in general the safety was just really, really good.
‘It’s easy to say it wasn’t great to watch because there was a lot of long frames and there was a few misses here and there but a lot of it was down to really good safety.
‘No complaints from my side on that part, I just need to be better. I need to play better so I can dictate play and not let him dictate play. That’s the bottom line. If I play well what he does is irrelevant and I just didn’t.’
It was a painful end to his campaign for Allen, but in the immediate aftermath he was already looking at the positives of a season which saw him win three-ranking titles.
‘In general, I’m taking a lot of positives out of the season,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to sit here and be overly disappointed, I’m disappointed now because I’ve just lost a big match, but in general there’s a lot of things to be happy about.’
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