{"id":12963,"date":"2012-05-22T18:25:52","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T01:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/05\/22\/sepahan-eliminate-esteghlal-from-acl\/"},"modified":"2012-05-22T18:25:52","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T01:25:52","slug":"sepahan-eliminate-esteghlal-from-acl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/05\/22\/sepahan-eliminate-esteghlal-from-acl\/","title":{"rendered":"Sepahan eliminate Esteghlal from ACL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 10px; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/media.farsnews.com\/media\/Uploaded\/Files\/Images\/1390\/12\/17\/13901217213604256_PhotoL.jpg\" height=\"231\" width=\"332\" \/>PFDC &#8211; ESFAHAN, <strong>Sepahan Esfahan celebrated a well deserved 2-0 victory over Esteghlal Tehran in the Asian Champions League&#8217;s round of 16 on Tuesday to become the first side to qualify for the quarterfinals.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>In the only leg of the first playoff round in a packed Naghsh-e-Jahan stadium, the homeside took an early lead. Noone felt responsible for veteran playmaker Moharram Navidkia, who unleashed a tricky shot from outside the box which could be saved by Mehdi Rahmati. <\/p>\n<p>However, neither Xhevahir Sukaj nor Bruno Cesar Correa were marked well and so the Albanian striker could head the rebound to the Brazilian, who made it 1-0 with a well placed but all but powerful effort after eight minutes. <\/p>\n<p>Esteghlal failed to really impose pressure on the four-time Iranian league champions and were punished for their lacklustre performance after 35 minutes. <\/p>\n<p>Again Sukaj escaped his marker and was able to head a corner kick to the far post back to center, were defender Mohsen Bengar rose above all opponents and powerfully headed the ball into the net. <\/p>\n<p>The visitors never looked like pulling one back and so Sepahan rather convincingly booked their place among Asia&#8217;s top eight. <\/p>\n<p>Persepolis Tehran will be eager to follow Sepahan to the quarterfinal stage Wednesday night, when they will take on Al Ittihad in Jeddah a 09:10pm local time.<\/p>\n<p>In the other round of 16 game played on Tuesday, Al Ahli of Saudi Arabia defeated Al Jazeera of the UAE after penalty kicks. The game had ended 2-2 after regular and 3-3 after extra time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PFDC &#8211; ESFAHAN, Sepahan Esfahan celebrated a well deserved 2-0 victory over Esteghlal Tehran in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":3842,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963","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=12963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}