{"id":32451,"date":"2018-06-21T13:48:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T20:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=32451"},"modified":"2018-06-21T13:48:41","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T20:48:41","slug":"ezatolahi-ready-to-take-his-chances-against-portugal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/06\/21\/ezatolahi-ready-to-take-his-chances-against-portugal\/","title":{"rendered":"Ezatolahi ready to take his chances against Portugal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters – KAZAN, Saeid Ezatolahi will attempt to put aside the disappointment of seeing his potential equalizer against Spain ruled out for offside when Iran go for a win against Portugal that would fire them into the knockout phase of the World Cup for a first time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spain took all three points at Kazan Arena on Wednesday thanks to a fortuitous Diego Costa goal to leave Carlos Queiroz\u2019s side needing to beat his countrymen in their final group match in Saransk on Monday to advance to the Round of 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur full concentration is now on Portugal and we have a very hard task ahead of us, but we are determined to get this win,\u201d said the midfielder, who missed Iran\u2019s win over Morocco in their opening game due to suspension.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be working hard to get this win and to qualify for the next round.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result against Spain could\u2019ve been better for us, we deserved more but this is why we call it the beautiful game. Sometimes the ball just doesn\u2019t go in the goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we performed brilliantly for such a young team and with such a great coach and we were able to pay back his trust and determination and his hard work.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people enjoyed this and we did everything with all of our hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran adopted an ultra-defensive approach until Costa finally broke their stubborn resistance nine minutes into the second half when he deflected Raman Rezaeian\u2019s attempted clearance beyond goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand with his knee.<\/p>\n

The goal prompted the Iranians to open up and Queiroz\u2019s team caused the 2010 world champions plenty of problems as they sought an equalizer.<\/p>\n

Ezatolahi thought he had levelled the scores when he swept the ball home after the Spanish defense failed to clear Rezaeian\u2019s free-kick, only for referee Andres Cunha to rule the goal out after consultation with VAR officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was a goal and for that fraction of a second I was thinking about all the hard work that I had done and, because in the first game I was suspended, I was under a lot of pressure,\u201d the 21-year-old said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod helped me to play well but unfortunately we couldn\u2019t score, the goal didn\u2019t count.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we are a little bit sad but we will continue to work hard for the next game to make our fans happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters – KAZAN, Saeid Ezatolahi will attempt to put aside the disappointment of seeing his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":32452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92,89,93,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":1734,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32451","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\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32453,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32451\/revisions\/32453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}