{"id":11095,"date":"2010-03-23T22:21:33","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T05:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/03\/23\/marfavi-win-showed-championship-credentials\/"},"modified":"2010-03-23T22:21:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T05:21:33","slug":"marfavi-win-showed-championship-credentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/03\/23\/marfavi-win-showed-championship-credentials\/","title":{"rendered":"Marfavi: Win showed championship credentials"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marfavi\"AFC – TEHRAN, Esteghlal boss Samad Marfavi felt his side have laid down a marker as genuine contenders in the AFC Champions League after two goals from Farhad Majidi helped the Iranians down Al Gharafa 3-0 at the Azadi Stadium and gain leadership of Group A. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Majidi twice combined with Seyed Salehi to find the back of the net after 12 and 54 minutes before Pejman Montazeri’s late header added the gloss to a fine win.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result showed that Esteghlal are a strong side but we can prove to be better,\u201d said Marfavi.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first target in this game was to grab the win and then to score as many goals as we could. <\/p>\n

\u201cI should say that today\u2019s win was a result of my players\u2019 hard work and perseverance during recent weeks. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good game and we were fortunately highly motivated. It was not an easy task to defeat them especially by three goals. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew them quite well. We\u2019d analyzed them both technically and mentally. I\u2019m glad my players were very enthusiastic to try and win. You could see that they never backed off after making the breakthrough and adding the second goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a return game against Al Gharafa on the agenda next week, Marfavi admitted he may tinker with his formation in Qatar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI might change my plans for the next match because every game requires its own tactics,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe finished the first half top of Group A but we can\u2019t say for sure who will qualify. There’s still three more games for each team.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the return match, my priority will be winning the game but gaining one point from an away match can be satisfying, too. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to play at the same level to ensure a smooth progression to the next round.\u201d
Al Gharafa\u2019s head coach Caio Junior admitted the absence of influential Brazilian playmaker Juninho played a large part in the result. <\/p>\n

\u201cI should firstly congratulate Esteghlal for this victory, they converted the opportunities they created and we didn\u2019t, that\u2019s why they won and we lost,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to reiterate that the result was fair but don\u2019t forget that we missed Juninho for this game and we couldn\u2019t have him in the squad. <\/p>\n

\u201cHis absence had a huge negative impact on our loss today as it was our first time playing without him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you lose it gets more difficult for you to think about going to the next round but we\u2019re not frustrated as we still have the second leg of this game to compensate for today\u2019s lacklustre exhibition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like the feeling that my team\u2019s performance is based on individuals but we missed a big name for today\u2019s clash and it was unusual for my boys to be playing without him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed Caio Junior felt it was the midfield battle where his side fell down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I should say the problem is only in defence, I should take a closer look at my midfield,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy midfielders couldn\u2019t provide enough balls for the strikers and that was the main reason we didn\u2019t create many chances during the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – TEHRAN, Esteghlal boss Samad Marfavi felt his side have laid down a marker…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":10875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":2511,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}