{"id":12064,"date":"2011-04-06T19:15:52","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T02:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/04\/06\/sepahans-ghalenoei-stays-grounded\/"},"modified":"2011-04-06T19:15:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T02:15:52","slug":"sepahans-ghalenoei-stays-grounded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/04\/06\/sepahans-ghalenoei-stays-grounded\/","title":{"rendered":"Sepahan’s Ghalenoei stays grounded"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ghalenoei-sepahan11\"AFC – ESFAHAN, Sepahan coach Amir Ghalenoei refused to get too carried away despite seeing his side move within touching distance of the last 16 of the 2011 AFC Champions League with a 2-0 win over Al Gharafa at the Foolad Shahr. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Following a goalless first-half, the hosts went in front in the 54th minute when Hadi Aghily converted from the spot after Ibrahima Toure had been brought down in the box.<\/p>\n

Ahmad Jamshidian then wrapped up the points 11 minutes later when he beat Al Gharafa keeper Qasem Burhan from long range with a swerving strike to leave the Iranians top of Group A on nine points, three ahead of Al Hilal and eight ahead of both Al Gharafa and Al Jazira.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still can’t say that we are qualified 100% to the next stage because our main opponent is Al Hilal so if we can beat them, we are certainly going to be in the next round.<\/p>\n

“We were there better side in the second-half and we could play a better game to compensate our somehow bad performance in the first-half.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is true that we won the match but the more important point was that we could perform our tactical plans well in the game.<\/p>\n

“However, despite playing a good game we still have some problems and we have to solve them in the next stages.<\/p>\n

“We increased the pace of the match in the second period and through that, Al Gharafa lost their concentration and we scored the second goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cEsfahan should be honoured that they have such a great and professional team like Sepahan and I would like to stay here if the managers and the president of the club want me to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opposite number Bruno Metsu saw Al Gharafa fail to score for the third consecutive game but the Frenchman refused to give up hope of reaching the knockout stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had good goal scoring opportunities in the first-half but were unable to score. I am completely satisfied with my team in the first-half but I cannot say that we played well in the second-half because Sepahan is a very strong team and they could put a lot of pressure on us,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still in the tournament and we still have a chance to qualify to the next stage. What we need to do is to win all our remaining games and try to solve our problems and weaknesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cSepahan are a very good team who can take advantage from any opportunity and they can even be the champions even though it is impossible to predict it for sure at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I had expected to end\u00a0 Al Gharafa’s failure in Iran but unfortunately we lost our confidence in the second-half which caused us not to perform our tactical plans in the game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – ESFAHAN, Sepahan coach Amir Ghalenoei refused to get too carried away despite seeing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":3400,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12064","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=12064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}