{"id":12176,"date":"2011-05-24T19:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T02:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/05\/24\/skocic-strikes-defiant-note\/"},"modified":"2011-05-24T19:00:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T02:00:04","slug":"skocic-strikes-defiant-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/05\/24\/skocic-strikes-defiant-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Skocic strikes defiant note"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" alt=\"Ebrahimzadeh\" src=\"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Ebrahimzadeh.jpg\" height=\"245\" width=\"377\" \/>AFC &#8211; ESFAHAN, <strong>Al Nassr boss Dragan Skocic struck a defiant note as his side look to  upset the odds and beat last year&#8217;s AFC Champions League finalists Zob  Ahan on their own turf. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Saudis face their Iranian opponents at the Foolad Shahr in  the last 16 of the 2011 AFC Champions League eager to spring a surprise  over their hosts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact that they were runners-up of the tournament last year is in the history of the Champions League now,\u201d said Skocic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat means we are not afraid of them because we play much better if our opponents are stronger and play better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Skocic admitted it will be no easy task to reach the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know they are very strong, especially up front , and their powerful offence is a bit worrying for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI  respect the other team a lot but we are in Esfahan to do what we can to  win the game. We are in the knockout stage of the competition and it  means we have only one chance to go to the next round.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe more  and the harder we train, the better the chance we have to win the game  tomorrow. I believe we can defeat them at home, we have already beaten  Esteghlal. I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of Zob Ahan  and I am sure we can use good strategies to win the game.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Hossein  Mahini is suspended for the clash and Zob Ahan boss Mansour  Ebrahimzadeh hopes his side can use home advantage to its full against  Al Nassr.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are the hosts and should get the best of our hosting conditions to win the game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should play in a way that everybody is satisfied with the performance and effort we put in the game.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis will be a very tough game because the winner goes through to the next round and the losers are out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAl  Nassr are a very intelligent team and they know how to play well  against powerful teams. It doesn\u2019t matter which position the two teams  have finished in their domestic league, this is a different tournament  and all teams make their best efforts to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; ESFAHAN, Al Nassr boss Dragan Skocic struck a defiant note as his side&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":10999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":2625,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}