Shamsaei praises ‘tired’ Tasisat’s final push

AFC – ISFAHAN, Tasisat Daryaei coach Amir Shamsaei praised his team for preserving despite suffering from fatigue to secure their place in the final of the 2015 AFC Futsal Club Championship.

The Iranians handed NAFT Al Wasat a 7-3 defeat on Wednesday just 24 hours after a punishing 4-3 win over defending champions Nagoya Oceans in the quarter-finals to maintain their winning run at the tournament.

Tasisat have now scored 28 times in four games after Majid Raeisi scored a hat-trick while Ghodrat Bahadori, Mohamad Keshavarz, Reza Sangsefidi and Vahid Shamsaee also struck for the Tehran-based club.

“As I said before this game, we had some special conditions,” he said.

“Because of yesterday’s game our players had lots of problems physically. We tried to do our best but we didn’t press enough during this game.

“We didn’t want to get injured for the final and I think the players played very hard to get the result. We were able to win because of our experience. Semi-final games are really hard in any tournament.

The only downside to another stellar performance by Tasisat was the red card shown to goalkeeper Mostafa Nazari, who was sent off in the 17th minute for handling the ball outside the area.

Vahid Seifan took his place between the posts and is expected to replace him in the final on Friday.

“Mostafa is a good player and in these four matches he has only had to make 12 or 13 saves,” said Shamsaei. “He has actually said he wishes he had more to do.

“He was ready for this game, he’s a good player and I wish we had him in the final, but Seifan has shown that he can be calm and he was successful tonight so I know he will do well.”

NAFT Al Wasat coach Haitham Abbas was convinced his team had the opportunities to win the game and progress to the final for the first time, and he highlighted his disappointment with his team’s Iranian duo Mohammad Naser Safari and Behzad Fereidoon.

“I’d just like to say one thing: if our players had taken their chances the result would have been different,” he said. “I don’t want to speak about the players of Tasisat, I just want to say we lost genuine chances three times in the game and because of that the result changed.

“We lost chances during the game. We had three chances to score into empty goals and we missed them.

“Our Iranian players didn’t play well, we lost today because of them. They helped us to get to this stage but today they weren’t so good. But I’m sure they will be in the Iranian national team in the near future, and I hope so.”