According to the reporter of Mehr, the Iranian youth football team will face the Iraqi team in the quarter-finals of the Asian Championship on Saturday next week. This match is important in several ways. First, the winning team in this match goes to the semi-finals and gets the quota for the Youth World Cup. On the other hand, the Iraqi team is led by “Imad Mohammad Reza”, a former striker of the Iraqi national team and Sepahan club, who has a long history in the Iranian league.
Yesterday, Iraq played against Syria in the last match of the group stage and while winning by one goal until the last seconds, they conceded a draw in the 90+5th minute. This Syrian goal could even rule out Iraq’s promotion to the quarter round, but this team went to the next round due to a better goal difference than Indonesia.
Iraq’s weak performance against Syria led Iraqi fans to criticize the performance of their country’s team and forced Emad Reza to react.
Emad Reza said in the press conference after the game: We played a crazy game. We lost strange situations in this game. What is important now is that our team is among the top 8 teams in the tournament.
The head coach of Iraq noted: “Despite the promotion, I am not satisfied with the level of play of some players in the meeting with Syria, especially from an individual point of view, losing opportunities in yesterday’s game taught us an important lesson.”
Emad Reza continued: Some people blame us for wasting opportunities, but what should I do when I am trying so hard with the players? They are the ones who missed those opportunities, not the coach. What else should the coach do?
He emphasized: “We paid the price for missing opportunities and the Syrian team tied the game in the lost time.”
The head coach of Iraq said about the dissatisfaction of the fans with the result and the performance of his team against Syria: I am also not satisfied with the events of this game, but I hope that the spectators’ discomfort will be postponed until after the matches. We have a very important game with Iran and if the fans are happy, it makes me happy. We will seek their satisfaction and try hard not to make mistakes.
The long-time Sepahan striker, who is in charge of the Iraqi youth team, said: “We will face the Iranian team, which is an important team. I know the power of Iranian football because I have played in this country for 9 years. We will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the Iranian team. I hope our team will be successful in its next match and get a quota for the World Cup by advancing to the group of four teams.