{"id":20579,"date":"2015-02-17T10:38:09","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20579"},"modified":"2015-02-17T10:38:54","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T18:38:54","slug":"mansourian-maintains-naft-will-surprise-in-acl-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/02\/17\/mansourian-maintains-naft-will-surprise-in-acl-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"Mansourian maintains Naft will \u2018surprise\u2019 in ACL debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Coach Alireza Mansourian insists Iran\u2019s Naft Tehran can be a surprise package in the AFC Champions League after defeating Qatar\u2019s El Jaish 1-0 at the Azadi Stadium on Tuesday to advance to the group stages of the continental competition for the first time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After a goalless first half in which few chances were created, Naft scored the only goal of the game five minutes after the interval when forward Amir Motahhari headed home an Iman Mobali cross.<\/p>\n<p>And despite a late rally by the visitors in which substitute Mohammed Muntari twice could have levelled, the Iranians were able to hold on and secure a famous victory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m so happy my young team came out with a victory,\u201d said Mansourian, whose side is now set to face inaugural AFC Champions League winners Al Ain of the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan champions Pakhtakor and Saudi Arabia King\u2019s Cup holders Al Shabab in Group B.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can be West Asia\u2019s surprise package as I believe in my players and think they can get good results in the group stage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Naft will begin their maiden continental campaign against Pakhtakor in Tashkent next Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>El Jaish, meanwhile, missed out on securing their third consecutive appearance in the group stage AFC Champions League having reached the Round of 16 in 2013 before failing to progress to the knockout stage last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter conceding the goal we lost our structure and discipline,\u201d said El Jaish coach Sabri Lamouchi.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe came here to get a win, but unfortunately the game didn\u2019t go our way. We played well but in certain moments of the match, we weren\u2019t what I expected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to congratulate Naft because they had a very good performance and they played well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were the deserved winners in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, Coach Alireza Mansourian insists Iran\u2019s Naft Tehran can be a surprise package&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":14030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":3250,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20579","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=20579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}