{"id":15668,"date":"2013-08-22T12:51:10","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T19:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=15668"},"modified":"2013-08-22T12:51:10","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T19:51:10","slug":"ghalenoei-laments-low-key-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2013\/08\/22\/ghalenoei-laments-low-key-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghalenoei laments low-key performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

AFC – TEHRAN, Esteghlal coach Amir Ghalenoei admitted that his players were below par on Wednesday as they eked out a 1-0 win over Buriram United in the first leg of their AFC Champions League quarter-finals at the Azadi Stadium.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Khosro Heydari opened the scoring for the Iranian champions with a fortunate goal from the right flank after less than two minutes. But after a promising start, the hosts gave a stuttering performance in front of their fans and they were fortunate not to concede an equaliser to the Thai FA Cup holders.<\/p>\n

While pleased with the win, which gives his side a precious advantage to take into the return match in Thailand next month, Ghalanoei felt that the performance of his players did not meet his expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to devise more attacks but we failed to do that due to poor play-making,\u201d said the former Iran national coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t very content with (striker) Arash Borhani\u2019s display but (goalkeeper) Mehdi Rahmati made some good saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t stressed out, but I have to confess we weren\u2019t good enough in the second period.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the performance of winger Mohammed Ghazi was criticised by the Iranian media, Ghalanoei (pictured) felt other players were at fault including captain Farhad Majidi who squandered a gilt-edge opportunity to increase Esteghlal\u2019s lead in the early stages of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good start to our campaign towards the final goal, but Farhad Majidi could have doubled the lead for us, had he been more careful in finishing,\u201d lamented Ghalanoei.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the mistake I made in the second half was to reduce our midfielders from four to three. I don\u2019t know for what reason you are only complaining about Mohammad Ghazi because in my view the whole team didn\u2019t play well at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarhad Majidi is a player who can score from tight angles and he\u2019s one of those players who can be the saviour of a team when the game is tight. But like some of our other players he didn\u2019t play a good game either.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – TEHRAN, Esteghlal coach Amir Ghalenoei admitted that his players were below par on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":2517,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15668","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=15668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}