{"id":12134,"date":"2011-05-03T22:08:17","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T05:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/05\/03\/daei-downplays-piroozis-prospects\/"},"modified":"2011-05-03T22:08:17","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T05:08:17","slug":"daei-downplays-piroozis-prospects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/05\/03\/daei-downplays-piroozis-prospects\/","title":{"rendered":"Daei downplays Piroozi\u2019s prospects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"daei-shout33\"AFC – TEHRAN, Piroozi coach Ali Daei played down his team\u2019s hopes of progressing to the knockout stage of the 2011 AFC Champions League despite staying in the hunt with a 3-2 win over Group C leaders Al Ittihad*. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Tehran-based club were on course for their first win of a disappointing campaign inside 20 minutes when Hamidreza Aliasgari and Shpejtim Arifi both found the target.<\/p>\n

Al Ittihad did pull a goal back through Mohammed Al Rashed\u2019s header but Aliasgari\u2019s second after 70 minutes sealed the points and ensured that Sekou Berthe\u2019s stoppage-time own goal proved only a consolation.<\/p>\n

The win meant Piroozi remain three points behind second-placed Bunyodkor, who won by the same scoreline against Al Wahda, but their hopes of progressing are undermined by an inferior goal difference*.<\/p>\n

Despite facing winless Al Wahda away in their final game, former Iran international striker Daei is not getting carried away over his side’s chances.<\/p>\n

“If we had played better against Bunyodkor and Al Wahda in Tehran then we would be in a better position than we are – we are regretting our missed chances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, this is football. I hope we can get good results for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough we have had very good chances to be near the top we have not been able to take advantage of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a good experience for both me and the players.”<\/p>\n

Daei praised his players for inflicting a first defeat of the competition on Al Ittihad, who had already qualified.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the better side today and started very well,\u201d Daei added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very satisfied with my team’s defensive performance even though we conceded from two set-pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cAl Ittihad are a very good team and their first goal caused us to lose our concentration for sometime. However we managed to regain control of the game.<\/p>\n

Al Ittihad boss Toni admitted his side were always facing an uphill target after conceding twice so early, but denied he had underestimated his rivals.<\/p>\n

He also refused to blame the team\u2019s late arrival in Tehran last night for their poor beginning, after a delayed flight saw them miss the pre-game press conference and threw out their plans to train before the game.<\/p>\n

“First of all I have to express my apologies for my absence last night, which was due to the airplane’s late arrival to Tehran,\u201d the Portuguese tactician said.<\/p>\n

“We knew everything about Piroozi and they didn’t surprise us at all with their performance. They have quick players and can counter-attack very well.<\/p>\n

“In games like this when you concede two early goals, the situation will become hard for you. We couldn\u2019t get ourselves into the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew Piroozi has nothing to lose today and that they would go all out for the three points. I have said that this is a hard group and all our opponents are tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe we could have played better, but I should congratulate Piroozi for their win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toni was not willing to go into detail about the reasons for his team\u2019s late arrival the previous night, adding only: \u201cI am only a head coach and I am not dealing with such matters. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I know is that we had planned to arrive in Tehran two hours before the pre-match press conference in order to be present for the conference and have a training session.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we couldn’t arrive on time because of some problems.”

* Note by PFDC: Due to AFC CL rules stating direct duel being the tiebreaker number one in case of equal points, Persepolis are already certainly out of the race for a playoff ticket, having lost the directl duel against Bunyodkor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – TEHRAN, Piroozi coach Ali Daei played down his team\u2019s hopes of progressing to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":10869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":4294,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12134","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=12134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}