{"id":35251,"date":"2019-01-27T09:39:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T17:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=35251"},"modified":"2019-01-27T09:39:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T17:39:10","slug":"iran-coach-quieroz-refuses-to-be-drowned-out-by-background-noise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/01\/27\/iran-coach-quieroz-refuses-to-be-drowned-out-by-background-noise\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran coach Quieroz refuses to be drowned out by background noise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Outlook – AL AIN, A series of blaring loudspeaker announcements repeatedly silenced Iran coach Carlos Queiroz on Sunday — just as he was urging his team to express themselves in their Asian Cup semi-final against Japan.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Shut up!” The 65-year-old Portuguese said to giggles after the fifth interruption, before he was finally able to conclude his remarks on Monday’s game at Al Ain’s Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What’s important is, we have a great team, great players, but we cannot lose our identity,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We need to be ourselves and play with confidence and trust.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technical hitch is far from the only problem faced by Iran, who are dealing with nuclear sanctions and internal discord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran, who won the last of their three titles in 1976, have also dealt with injuries and AFC warnings over government interference as they bid to end their 43-year drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Queiroz has dismissed talk that Iran are favourites, and went out of his way to praise Japan’s “brilliant football”, the ex-Manchester United, Real Madrid and Portugal coach must be scenting blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asia’s top-ranked side are yet to concede in the competition, scoring 12 goals and impressively sweeping aside Marcello Lippi’s China 3-0 in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hajime Moriyasu’s Japan, meanwhile, have eked out one-goal wins in each of their five games. Hosts UAE and Qatar play the other semi-final in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran’s 2015 Asian Cup ended in acrimony, when Australian referee Ben Williams gave Mehrdad Pooladi his second yellow card — for time-wasting — in the first half of their quarter-final against Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran eventually lost the combustible clash on penalties, but 2015 veteran Masoud Shojaei said Team Melli had no concerns that Monday’s semi would be refereed by another Australian, Chris Beath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We don’t think about that anymore, that’s in the past,” said the 34-year-old midfielder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Mr. Williams made a mistake, just like anyone else.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our target and our focus is to keep our concentration and stick to our plan… Hopefully we can bring our ‘little friend’ back home,” he added, referring to the trophy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outlook – AL AIN, A series of blaring loudspeaker announcements repeatedly silenced Iran coach Carlos…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":35252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,175,84,92,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-asian-cup","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":1646,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251","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=35251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35253,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251\/revisions\/35253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}