{"id":36033,"date":"2019-04-09T17:25:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T00:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=36033"},"modified":"2019-04-09T17:25:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T00:25:11","slug":"esteghlal-are-alive-in-the-tournament-again-montazeri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/04\/09\/esteghlal-are-alive-in-the-tournament-again-montazeri\/","title":{"rendered":"Esteghlal are alive in the tournament again: Montazeri"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AFC – DOHA, Veteran defender Pejman Montazeri was on the scoresheet as Esteghlal FC defeated Al Hilal SFC 2-1 on Monday, and the 36-year-old said the victory has brought renewed hope for the 2019 AFC Champions League campaign.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent poor run that included a defeat to bitter rivals Persepolis was not the ideal preparation for a difficult-looking Group C clash against Saudi Arabia powerhouse Al Hilal, but Tehran giants Esteghlal rose to the occasion to secure a priceless win – their first of the 2019 edition – and stay in contention in the race for the Round 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what has been considered among the most difficult groups in the AFC Champions League this year – featuring three former continental champions in Al Ain, Al Hilal and Esteghlal, along with a team full of 2019 AFC Asian Cup winners in Al Duhail – Montazeri was in no doubt to the importance of the result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We feel like we are alive in the tournament again,” said the IR Iran international. “We knew it was going to be a tough, important game because they are the team at the top of the group and we really needed these three points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Actually, we expected this game to be so intense, and so we played with full concentration from the first minute until the 90th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They are really good. Congratulations to the Al Hilal team for a great match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They played very well and they have many very good players, but this is football.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Thanks God we got the win. But this is just the beginning for us, we\u2019re now looking forward to the games to come and let\u2019s see how things go.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With four points on the board, Esteghlal are level with second placed Al Duhail, who have a superior head-to-head record, and two further behind front-runners Al Hilal, who they will face in the return meeting in Abu Dhabi on April 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – DOHA, Veteran defender Pejman Montazeri was on the scoresheet as Esteghlal FC defeated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":36034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,173,84,164,136,165,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-esteghlal","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-persian-gulf-pro-league","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":628,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36033","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=36033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36035,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36033\/revisions\/36035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}