A great example of the ‘beautiful game’ gushes Ghalenoei

AFC – RIYADH, Sepahan coach Amir Ghalenoei felt his side’s 1-1 draw with Al Shabab at King Fahd international Stadium on Wednesday was a great advert for AFC Champions League football.

The visitors had dominated the early stages of the Group C encounter and took the lead in the 13th minute through Seyed Hosseini.

There was plenty of action at both ends of the pitch with both sides showing their attacking intent before Faisal Al Sultan levelled for Al Shabab with 21 minutes remaining.

The game could have gone either way after that but neither side was able to add a second before full time.

And though his side did not take all three points, Ghalenoei (pictured) believes the match was a great spectacle for the fans.

“The match was one of the most beautiful games in the first round of the current competition,” he said. “The players of both teams have shown fine performance with many chances to score.

“I insisted on my players to take advantage of all possible chances to score since we are playing an away match. If they had succeeded to do so, we would have won the match by at least six goals.

“In football, if you don’t score, you will conceded and that is what happened tonight.”

Al Shabab coach Jaime Pacheco felt his side always faced an uphill task after conceding the early goal.

“We conceded early when we were trying to score,” he said.” But the most important thing is we did not lose. We are in the first round and we still have hope.”

Pacheco had been particularly wary of the threat posed by Sepahan’s Ivorian import Ibrahima Toure and Iraq international Emad Mohammed and had adjusted his tactics accordingly at half-time to nullify them.

“During the break, I asked my players to closely watch striker Ibrahima Toure and Emad Mohammed as Sepahan depended on them for their counter attacks, due to their pace,” added Pacheco.

“The Iranian team was defending and we found it hard to go through their defensive wall. They were counter attacking us. I replaced Abdullah Al Astaa with striker Naji Majrashi to press on the opponents.

“My players have done what we wanted them to do and I am happy with their performance in this match.”