Tasisat Daryaei braced for tough Qadsia test in futsal finale

AFC – ISFAHAN, Amir Shamsaei is not expecting his Tasisat Daryaei side to cruise to victory in the final of the 2015 AFC Futsal Club Championship on Friday, despite having already comfortably defeated Qadsia SC in the tournament’s group stage.

Shamsaei’s team handed out a 9-2 thrashing to the Kuwaiti side in the initial phase of the competition, but Qadsia have managed to bounce back from that loss and the Iranian coach is focused solely on winning the title.

“We cannot say what the score will be in this game,” said the coach.

“We know what the game against this team will be like and Qadsia know what we are capable of doing, but in a final we have lots of special conditions.

“There’s no difference between 1-0 and 10-0 in a final. It’s important that we get the trophy in this game and Qadsia have lots of good physical players and they know futsal so well.

“They will be trying to win the trophy but we will try to get a good result in this game.”

Shamsaei will be without first choice goalkeeper Mostafa Nazari, who was sent off in the semi-final win over NAFT Al Wasat on Wednesday. Vahid Seifan is expected to replace Nazari, but Shamsaei is unconcerned.

“I feel all of our players are goalkeepers during the game,” he said. “You saw that in the last game when, on three or four occasions, our opponents came near our goal.

“But we have two good young goalkeepers and they have more than 15 national team games of experience between them so we’ll be ok in the final without Nazari, even though we’re not happy to lose him.”

Despite knowing his team face a tough challenge in the final against the tournament hosts, Qadsia coach Fabio Cortez took comfort in the knowledge that many of the pre-event favourites have struggled at the 2015 AFC Futsal Club Championship.

“This tournament has had some surprises because you have many good teams who have gone out before the semi-finals: Shenzhen are a good team, Chonburi, the Japanese,” said the Brazilian.

“These teams have had good preparations, so you don’t have easy games. Our games have been difficult, very hard. After I saw my team lose against the Iranians 9-2, I think the other teams were happy to play against us.

“But this tournament is very hard. You have to go step-by-step, day-by-day. You don’t have a simple way. There are no easy games.”