{"id":12185,"date":"2011-05-25T20:57:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T03:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/05\/25\/skocic-slams-side-after-bitter-defeat\/"},"modified":"2011-05-25T20:57:57","modified_gmt":"2011-05-26T03:57:57","slug":"skocic-slams-side-after-bitter-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/05\/25\/skocic-slams-side-after-bitter-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Skocic slams side after \u2018bitter defeat\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ebrahimzadeh\"AFC – ESFAHAN, Al Nassr coach Dragan Skocic felt his side gifted Zob Ahan their 4-1 victory in the last 16 of the 2011 AFC Champions League as last season\u2019s finalists continued their march through this season\u2019s competition. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Mohammad Ghazi and Igor Castro took advantage of some woeful defending to give Zob Ahan a two-goal lead inside the opening five minutes before Castro extended the advantage midway through the second-half.<\/p>\n

Zob Ahan keeper Shahab Gordan then allowed Bader Al Motawaa to net Al Nassr\u2019s only goal before Shaahin Kheiri\u2019s 30-yard thunderbolt 16 minutes from the end extinguished any hopes of an Al Nassr comeback.<\/p>\n

The Saudis also had Hussain Sulaimani sent-off on the stroke of full time and Skocic was furious at his team after the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to congratulate Zob Ahan on the win, this was a bitter defeat for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey scored two early goals and caught us off guard. We could have changed the proceedings of the game but it never happened. I\u2019m really angry with the result.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn games like this, experience of the players is your winning factor. We did have a couple of chances throughout the game but Khalatbari and Castro played brilliantly and their experience imposed the loss on us.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy own team gave away the victory to the Iranians. I haven\u2019t heard a thing about club\u2019s decision to sack me but I believe as a coach I have done all my duties well and if the club still believes I am at fault for the defeat, they can make whatever decision they wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zob Ahan manager Mansour Ebrahimzadeh pinpointed the two early strikes as key to their triumph.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could guess that they would be playing cautiously in the beginning, so we took a chance and fortunately scored twice in five minutes,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cDuring some minutes of the half we lost our mastery over the game and Al Nassr because they were playing quite defensively. However, our control was regained afterwards. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what will happen the next season. I am not sure if I will be here as the coach or not. However, I wish Zob Ahan all the best with the rest of the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what most Iranians would hope to see in the Champions League; an all-Iranian final.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – ESFAHAN, Al Nassr coach Dragan Skocic felt his side gifted Zob Ahan their…<\/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-12185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":3239,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12185","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=12185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12185\/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=12185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}