Match № 38

The match № 38, match for the 5th place, tenth tournament day

I.R.IRAN – GREECE 3:2 (3:0)

January 12th, 2014, St. Petersburg, Peterburgsky SCC, 300 spectators

Referees: Ivan Saraev, Kirill Bolshakov, Konstantin Averyanov

I.R. Iran: Amini, Joudaki (c), Sohrabian, Hosseini, Sarlak, Aghaei (Ezzati, 88), Bazaj (Hashemi, 81), Seyyedi (Baghdadi, 90), Haghnazari (Soleimani, 84), Moharrami (Moghtadaei, 90), Fathian (Salimi, 65), Niazmand

Head coach: Ali Dousti Mehr

Greece: Kotsaris, Saliakas, Toufas, Oikonomou, Gialamidis (Kanavetas, 59), Tzanoulinos, Fasidis (Tsolakidis, 46), Koulouris, Neumann, Deligiannidis (c), Ktistopoulos

Head coach: Theodoros Pachatouridis

Goals: Fathian (18), Bazaj (34), Sohrabian (40), Neumann (47; 51, pen.)

Yellow cards: Gialamidis (27), Bazaj (35), Toufas (38), Neumann (58), Joudaki (72), Tzanoulinos (75)

Red card: Hosseini (50)

Best players: Golibolagh Yousef Seyyedi, Marios Tzanoulinos

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After match comments

Head coach of the team I.R.Iran Ali Dousti Mehr:

– I want to thank the organizers of the tournament. It is difficult to keep a good level of the tournament with so many teams and tough schedule, I realize it. We say thank you from our team and ask to invite us again. Your tournaments help us much. We hope that our team left only best impressions last year and this time. Talking about this match, we asked our players to follow the coach's instructions and obey the discipline as on the pitch and off it.

– You started second half with a good advantage 3:0. Had your players decided that the result was done and came to the second half relaxed?

– Don't forget that we played in the minority. The mistakes of players of this age are more obvious, plus their emotions. There are not professionals still; they will be able to manage with it in future. But now they are playing with such moments. They can score 5 goals and stop playing, but then it is a problem to come back to the game. But also they can spend the whole match with a good speed and performance but without scoring. It is obviously difficult to play 10 to 11 and show good football, finding the strengths for the offence. It is a good experience: we can understand the points we have to work at.

– Have you studied the playing of team Greece before the match? They won St. Petersburg and saved the match against Azerbaijan on the last seconds.

– Yes, we know the Greeks play by the scheme 4-1-4-1, and that they have strong, tall, robust players. Players with good physics can play football. And now they won the second half 2:0, though they could have won 4:0. But our analyzing their playing led us to the triumph. Though, again, playing shorthanded it was rather hard to accomplish. But we didn't see their performance during the whole second half, because we didn't allow them to play. And losing one player affected our playing very much.

– But when you were ten and missed two goals the team rushed forward, pushing the opponents from its goal area. And in the end you were making substitutions, setting the Greeks off tempo. So you had forces? And the tactics was to keep the winning score by all means?

– Yes, sure, while we had forces we tried not to allow the Greeks to play sharp. But the forces soon were over, for we were only ten. So I had to make substitutions in order to keep the players fit. And there was some kind of cunning. Many do so to kick the clock. We were to decide something, to add something new and to slow down the Greeks' playing, because our players were not so fast anymore.

Head coach of the team Greece Theodoros Pachatouridis hasn't attended the press conference.