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Confident Afzali already planning for final |
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 02:01 |
 Esfahan: Foolad Mahan Sepahan coach Hossein Afzali confidently predicted his side will beat Port Authority of Thailand on Thursday to take their place in the final of the inaugural AFC Futsal Club Championship.
Esfahan: Foolad Mahan Sepahan coach Hossein Afzali confidently predicted his side will beat Port Authority of Thailand on Thursday to take their place in the final of the inaugural AFC Futsal Club Championship.
The Iranians are the only side at the tournament able to boast a 100% record having beaten AUB Altyn Tash Bishkek of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbeks Stroitel Zarafshan and Japanese giants Nagoya Oceans to take first place in Group A and set-up a clash with the Thais.Nagoya Oceans take on Al Sadd of Qatar in the other semi-final game and Afzali admitted he will have one eye on that game in order to prepare for who Foolad will play in the final.We need to analyse the game between Al Sadd and Nagoya so that we can see who we will face in the final once we have won our semi-final game,said Afzali (pictured).Unlike many experts who think the Japanese team will be in the final I believe Al Sadd have some good players, especially their foreign players, and Nagoya are mentally down after their defeat to us so I believe we will face Al Sadd in the final.Nagoya had threatened to end Foolad's unbeaten record as they more than matched their Iranian opponents in the first half to go into the break with honours even at 2-2.However, the tournament hosts came out strong after the restart and Afzali felt the spaces between his defensive players and attacking players were being exploited by the Japanese in the first half.We had a big gap between the players who attacked and the players who defended, he added.
I advised them to decrease this gap so we could score more goals in the second half.Undoubtedly we will have a different strategy against the Thai team.
Their unity is much less than the Japanese side who try to put the pressure on the whole team and so we believe we can win.Iran coach Hossein Shams, who is working with the Foolad team as technical manager, praised the form of national team legend Vahid Shamsaee.No team has been able to prevent the 36-year-old from scoring against them so far and Shams believes he is only going to get better as the tournament goes on.Shamsaee was playing more as a team player against Nagoya, he said.In the first two games he was too individual but now he is playing more for the team and we hope we can use this as a weapon in the final.
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