{"id":20105,"date":"2015-01-11T02:43:04","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T10:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20105"},"modified":"2015-01-11T02:43:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T10:43:04","slug":"belmadi-slams-qatar-after-heavy-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/01\/11\/belmadi-slams-qatar-after-heavy-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Belmadi slams Qatar after heavy defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

AFC Asian Cup – CANBERRA, Qatar coach Djamel Belmadi slammed his side\u2019s performance after their 4-1 defeat to the United Arab Emirates in the AFC Asian Cup Australia 2015 Group C opener at Canberra Stadium on Sunday, with the Algerian saying he could take \u201cno positives\u201d from the defeat.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Former AFC Player of the Year Khalfan Ibrahim had given Belmadi\u2019s side the opener on 22 minutes with a sublime chipped finish but Ahmed Khalil equalised before half-time and the forward added a second with a free kick to put the Emirates in front early in the second half.<\/p>\n

With Qatar reeling, a subsequent brace from Khalil\u2019s strike-partner Ali Mabkhout gave the Emirati side a comprehensive win over the Gulf Cup champions to put them in the driving seat in the group and leave Belmadi fuming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no positives to take from this game. They were better than us, showed more quality and more creativity,\u201d said the Algerian.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we analyse goal by goal there were a lot of individual mistakes for their equaliser and in the second half it was two free-kicks for them that made the difference. After that it was really difficult to come back in the game against good opponents like the Emirates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to help us come back into the game with some changes but we didn\u2019t do enough and it was too late to equalise. Our players were focused and prepared for this game, so we cannot say our defeat was due to a lack of preparation or focus, we will have to search for the reason for this loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belmadi\u2019s team will need to bounce back in their next group stage tie when they face Iran at Sydney\u2019s Stadium Australia on Thursday and the Qatar coach is well aware of the difficulty of that upcoming fixture following the dispiriting loss in Canberra.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said on Saturday that our group is very strong and tough and all the teams are good. Now we have to face Iran who were in the last FIFA World Cup and are a strong team so it\u2019s another big game. We are already under pressure because we lost the game today, so we have to make a massive game on Thursday,\u201d said Belmadi.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most of the players it\u2019s the first time they were participating in this competition, we had a lot of players playing their first international competition so of course it\u2019s difficult. We will not give up even if it\u2019s a really bad start, and it is really bad no doubt about that, but we will have a good reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC Asian Cup – CANBERRA, Qatar coach Djamel Belmadi slammed his side\u2019s performance after their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":2791,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20105","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=20105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}