Coach Shams Azar: We were better against Persepolis in both halves

According to the sports reporter of Fars news agency, Shams Azar head coach Saeed Dakhi was banned from attending the press conference after the game against Persepolis due to his dismissal.

Based on this, Mehrdad Karimian, the coach of this team, appeared at the press conference and stated: “On a day when we could have gotten a better result, we gave up the game.” We had planned a lot to get points and we were the best team in both halves. In the first half, we didn’t give any chances to Persepolis and we completely closed the game, and in the second half we scored according to the plan.

He continued: “We didn’t have the experience we should have, but the great team of Persepolis used the experience of its players and won.” I congratulate them, but maybe we are not as satisfied with our game as we should be. We missed scoring opportunities and could have scored the second and third goals. I hope we make up for it in the next games.

Karimian said about the exact dismissal: “We protested at the scene of the goal.” When the out was thrown, the Persepolis player got stuck and the second ball reached the player who was offside. I think with the little information I have, that player was influential and the referee could have declared offside. We didn’t protest that much, but our head coach was fired. His absence on the sideline hit us. In big games, there is a lot of pressure, and he didn’t shout out his rightful benefit.

Coach Shams Azar said about the next week’s game against Sepahan: It will definitely be a difficult game for us, we will recover and plan from tomorrow. We could leave Tehran with a point and our unbeaten games reach 8, 9. I hope that we will score against Sepahan at home and with the presence of fans.

Regarding the fact that you played football in this game and this was in favor of Persepolis, he said: We knew that they could use the spaces behind our defense, but we closed all the ways of penetration and did not give any chances. Our players were young and 95% of them were playing for the first time in Azadi. As time went on, we got more into the game. In the second half, we put more pressure and played more open and achieved what we wanted, but we did not expect to score a goal due to the negligence of the defense when the opponent was 10 men. All in all, we have young people that you will hear more about in the future.

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