Tasisat coach salutes superstar Shamsaee

AFC – ISFAHAN, Coach Amir Shamsaei compared Iranian superstar Vahid Shamsaee to football greats Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane after the veteran steered Tasisat Daryaei into the semi-finals of the AFC Futsal Club Championship.

Shamsaee scored twice and set up a third in Tasisat’s 4-3 win over defending champions Nagoya Oceans on Tuesday evening in front of a boisterous crowd at Nagshe Jahan Stadium as the club aims to become the first Iranian club to win the title since 2012.

“I think big games need big players,” said Shamsaei. “Today was a very important game for us, a big game, and like Messi can change the result for Barcelona and Ronaldo can do it for Real or Zidane used to do it for France, in the big games Vahid can do this for us. He changed the result of this game and he’s one of the great players.”

Shamsaee’s influence on the game was remarkable: he scored his first goal in the seventh minute to cancel out Rafael Sakai’s second-minute opener for Nagoya before the 39-year-old set up Reza Sangsefidi to give Tasisat the lead from a quickly taken corner.

The former AFC Futsal Player of the Year restored Tasisat’s lead with a fine goal on the turn in the 38th minute after Kaoru Morioka had levelled the scores and Mohammad Zarei’s strike a minute from time meant Morioka’s second in the 40th minute was academic.

In total, the Tasisat captain played 38 of the 40 minutes and coach Shamsaei feels Shamsaee can also have a positive impact in the semi-final against NAFT Al Wasat on Wednesday.

“Physically Vahid is different to any other player in the world,” he said. “He’s a special player and when I feel the need to change him, we change him.

“We felt that Vahid should play this game and I’m sure tomorrow he will play as well as he can. I thought this would be the last year Vahid would play, but maybe in two or three years he will still be playing.”

The result meant the two-time champions Nagoya exited the competition earlier than expected, but coach Victor Acosta felt that, despite the loss, his players will have learned from the meeting with Tasisat.

“Today’s game was very tough, but it was a good game,” said the Spanish coach.

“We did our best and their players are very high quality.

“In my mind we could control the game but they took their chances at a good time in the game. We did our best, we tried everything to win this match and we had a lot of chances to win. But this is the game. This kind of game is good for us too, because we can improve a lot.

“Shamsaee is a great player. He was the man of the match because he scored the key goal for Tasisat. We had the chance to score and if we had scored maybe the Most Valuable Player would have been one of our players, maybe Tomoki Yoshikawa because he had a chance to score just before Shamsaee scored. But we couldn’t score.”