{"id":50624,"date":"2024-02-06T18:01:30","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T02:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=50624"},"modified":"2024-02-06T19:00:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T03:00:33","slug":"iran-question-arab-referee-appointment-for-asian-cup-semi-final-against-qatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2024\/02\/06\/iran-question-arab-referee-appointment-for-asian-cup-semi-final-against-qatar\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran question Arab referee appointment for Asian Cup semi-final against Qatar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters – DOHA, Iran’s Saeid Ezatolahi raised doubts about the AFC appointing an Arab referee for their Asian Cup semi-final clash against hosts and defending champions Qatar while he also complained about the lack of recovery time in the knockout stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wednesday’s semi-final will be officiated by Kuwait’s Ahmad Al-Ali who has taken charge of two group games and a last-16 tie at the tournament.<\/p>\n

“What is a little bit surprising for us is that the referee for tomorrow’s match is from Kuwait, he’s an Arab,” Ezatolahi told reporters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“We’re just wondering how it’s possible that they put an Arab as a referee for tomorrow’s match.
\n“But we are the Iran national team, we are a very big team. We have a very good players, we are professional.”
\nReuters has contacted the AFC for comment.<\/p>\n

Iran reached the semi-finals after they beat Asia’s top-ranked side Japan 2-1 despite having only two days to recover after their last-16 tie against Syria went to extra time and penalties.<\/p>\n

“In this tournament the players didn’t have enough time to recover, specifically in the knockout stage,” he added.
\n“Many of the players came straight from the their clubs and are under a lot of pressure here.”<\/p>\n

Iran coach Amir Ghalenoei reiterated the rest period being “less than 72 hours” before they faced Japan while he also took a shot at the Video Assistant Referees.<\/p>\n

“In this tournament at least, I can say that VAR was not very kind to us. We had a situation in the match against Japan that could have been a penalty on Sardar Azmoun but VAR did not check it for us,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But we have to be stronger than everything that is happening at this tournament.”<\/p>\n

NEARLY 50 YEARS<\/strong>
\nIran beat Qatar 4-0 in October but Ghalenoei urged his team to forget about previous results as they seek a place in their first final since they won their third title in 1976.<\/p>\n

“When Qatar reached the semi-finals they showed their quality, so we need to forget our result against Qatar and forget our performance against Japan. That belongs to history now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We need to show more quality and we have to cover more distance compared to the match against Japan. I hope we can reach the final after nearly 50 years. I have big belief in our players.”<\/p>\n

Qatar coach Marquez Lopez refused to comment on the referee’s appointment but he also spoke about the lack of time for recovery.<\/p>\n

“If we speak about preparation for tomorrow’s game it was a very short time, we had only two days to prepare,” he said.
\n“Tomorrow’s game will be the toughest match of the tournament for us.”<\/p>\n

Qatar’s Tarek Salman said there is fatigue in the squad after their quarter-final against Uzbekistan went to extra time and penalties but team morale remains high.<\/p>\n

“Everyone is excited, against Iran it will be a physical,” he said. “They have stars who play in big leagues in Europe so we’re motivated 200%. We hope to bring joy to our fans.”<\/p>\n

Reporting by Rohith Nair in Doha; Editing by Christian Radnedge<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters – DOHA, Iran’s Saeid Ezatolahi raised doubts about the AFC appointing an Arab referee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34468,"featured_media":50625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,175,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-asian-cup","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":1230,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50624","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\/34468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50624"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50629,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50624\/revisions\/50629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}