{"id":17558,"date":"2014-03-12T19:03:07","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T02:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=17558"},"modified":"2014-03-12T19:03:07","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T02:03:07","slug":"kranjcar-lauds-team-efforts-in-thrilling-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2014\/03\/12\/kranjcar-lauds-team-efforts-in-thrilling-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Kranjcar lauds team efforts in thrilling win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; ESFAHAN,  <strong>Sepahan Head Coach Zlatko Kranjcar lauded the fighting spirit of his players on Wednesday after they came from behind in difficult conditions to beat Al Hilal 3-2 in an AFC Champions League Group D clash at Foolad Shahr Stadium.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Iranian side trailed 2-1 at the break after set-piece goals by Segundo Castillo and Thiago Neves had cancelled out Ervin Bulku\u2019s opener for the home side.<\/p>\n<p>But as heavy rain lashed down in the second half, magnificent long-range strikes by Mehdi Sharifi and Xhevahir Sukaj secured victory for Sepahan and put them back on track in the AFC Champions League after an opening 3-1 loss to Al Sadd,<br \/>\n\u201cAs I had predicted it was a very tough match. We conceded twice in a short time span and went into our locker room as the losers,\u201d said the Sepahan boss.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe climate made it an even tougher clash for us, but we did our best from the very first moment to take the initiative.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut congratulations to my players who never got down after falling behind and tried until the very last moment. This was a hard-fought win for us and we were generously rewarded with three valuable points.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn such weather circumstance it\u2019s always a good idea to try score with a shot and that\u2019s what we did this evening.\u201d<br \/>\nAl Hilal coach Sami Al Jaber was far from pleased with the dropped points.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t deserve to lose all three points. We had many chances that we missed and the goals we conceded were because of personal mistakes,\u201d said the Saudi football legend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis match should have ended in a draw, but the climate had affected the pitch. I\u2019m proud of my team and players and we\u2019re not disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are another four matches for us to play and once against I reiterate that we didn\u2019t deserve to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; ESFAHAN, Sepahan Head Coach Zlatko Kranjcar lauded the fighting spirit of his players&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25049,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c14-ipl-league-persian-gulf-cup"],"views":2748,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17558","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\/25049"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}