Esteghlal 2 – 1 Al Ahli

The early exchanges produced little in the way of clear-cut chances although Marcinho saw a 30-yard free-kick fumbled round the post by keeper Mohammad Mohammadi after 10 minutes.

However, the home fans were celebrating in the 24th minute when Majidi evaded a tackle and then found Salehi’s run with a fine reverse ball that the forward subsequently buried into the back of the net.

Al Ahli looked to hit back and Simoes saw a low, left-foot strike turned around the post in the 34th minute. Esteghlal cleared the resulting corner but Faraj Darwish won a header on the edge of the box and as the ball came back in, Akbarpour barged into Al Abdullah and the referee pointed to the spot.

Simoes ran up, stopped, faked to shoot and then stroked the ball into the bottom corner with Mohammadi completely off balance to level the encounter.

Esteghlal came close to regaining the lead in the 43rd minute when Al Mosailem spilled Khosro Heydari’s cross, Majidi’s effort was blocked and when the ball came back out to Heydari, his shot was deflected narrowly wide.

However, Januario’s subsequent corner left Al Mosailem in no man’s land after the keeper had decided to come for the ball and Sadeghi jumped above a crowd of players to head into the unguarded net.

Heydari saw another strike deflected narrowly wide at the start of the second period and Sadeghi directed a downward header from another Januario corner straight at the Al Ahli keeper on the hour mark.

Marcinho curled another set piece narrowly wide of the far post from 20 yards in the 69th minute before substitute Arash Borhani wasted a good chance to put the result beyond doubt with six minutes remaining.

The striker raced clear of the Al Ahli defence to latch on to Mohsen Yousefi’ s long ball but tried to take the ball around Al Mosailem but dallied too long, allowing the visitors to recover as Jufain Al Bishi cleared his eventual shot off the line.

Hossein Kazemi saw a long-range free-kick drift narrowly wide before Al Ahli gave the hosts a scare as the final whistle approached when Abdulrahim Jezawi burst into the box past two defenders but Mohammadi saved well at his near post.