Ghotbi lauds Iran victory

Iran coach Afshin Ghotbi said his side put history aside as they battled to a hard-fought 2-1 Asian Cup victory over Iraq on Tuesday.

The neigbouring Middle Eastern countries, who fought a war in between 1980-88, have one of the strongest rivalries in world football, and Tuesday’s added another chapter as Iran came from behind to snatch victory.

Iraq captain Younis Mahmoud opened the scoring with a strike in the 12th minute, but Reza Rezaei equalised just before half-time before a late free kick from Iman Mobali gave Iran all three points.

“I think we started the game with a lot of stress and I think the stress had a lot to do with the mistakes we made but I think as we went on we played better football,” Ghotbi said.

“Every time these two countries play each other at football there is so much rivalry and history it is very difficult to get the players to focus and concentrate on playing football and it becomes more of an emotional, fighting game.”

“I think whenever neighbours play each other there is always rivalry, you look at all the classical rivalries across the world and I think Iran and Iraq is rivalry that has been around for a long time, it’s a special one and I think it’s fantastic we have these rivalries.”

With the game evenly balanced at half-time, Ghotbi said he tried to have a calming influence on his players during the break.

“What we tried to do between the halves was emotionally settle our players down and talk about the organisation in our defence,” Ghotbi said.

“The Iraqi team are very difficult to play against. They play direct and are fighters in all position and are especially dangerous on set pieces, they are not easy opponents.”

Iraq coach Wolfgang Sidka was disappointed his team did not come away with more and rued the late foul which gave Mobali the eventual winner.

“It was an exciting match and both teams worked very hard,” Sidka said. “It was 50-50 (and) a good result for Iran. We have lost three points.”

“Iran played very tough … what I missed from our game is more ball possession and movement. It’s hard to do if the other team puts a lot of pressure on.”

“At the end, what we did wrong was give away a foul unnecessarily around the box. We knew they were very dangerous in this situation.”