Injuries our Achilles’ Heel laments Doustimehr

AFC – LINZI, Iran coach Ali Doustimehr feels injuries to key players Kaveh Rezaei and Omid Alishah ultimately hampered their AFC U-19 Championship bid as they prepare to wrap up their Group D campaign against Yemen at Linzi Stadium.

A 3-0 defeat to Australia followed their opening loss to Korea Republic means Iran have just pride to play for against their regional rivals.

Midfielder Alishah has not been fully fit through the opening two games while striker Rezaei, top-scorer as Iran won the AFC U-16 Championship in Tashkent two years ago, was only able to come off the bench against Australia having missed the Korea encounter.

And Doustimehr (pictured) lamented the condition of two of his key players with his side unable to find the back of the net in 180 minutes, including a penalty miss against Australia that could have turned the game when they were 2-0 down.

“Football is a game of moments and in my opinion, we have been a little unlucky,” he said.

“The point is that we haven’t had two players, Rezaei and Alishah, fully fit. We lost to Australia but we played very well in the second-half. We couldn’t score one goal, I don’t know why it has happened that we couldn’t score one goal in two games. We couldn’t even score a penalty.”

Yemen coach Sami Al Nash, meanwhile, is hoping to go out on a high note following a much-improved performance in the 1-0 defeat to Korea having been outclassed by Australia 4-1 in their opening game.

“Our last match against Iran will be for third place and we will try to play well,” he said.

“God willing we will rectify our mistakes from the Korea game. We also watched the game with Australia to see how they play.”

Al Nash revealed, however, that the build-up to the tournament had not been ideal for his side.

“We didn’t get much time to prepare for this tournament and we didn’t play many games against national teams, we only played against some club sides,” he added.

“We had just three training camps – the first was in Tunisia – then we participated in a friendly tournament in Eritrea and then we came directly to China.

“Our team did not play well in that tournament because, as you know, in Islam it was the month of Ramadan. The players were fasting and the matches were in the morning.”