Friday’s 3-0 victory against Lebanon stretched Qatar’s AFC Asian Cup winning streak to eight matches – stretching back to their 2019 title triumph – and should the China PR-Lebanon tie end in a draw on Wednesday – Marquez Lopez’s defending champions will be assured of topping Group A. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to enter this match in order to achieve a victory,\u201d said Lopez. \u201cThey are a difficult opponent but we have studied them and we know that they have speedy players who can hurt us.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the first day I\u2019ve said that we have to take it one match at a time, we want to lead and we want to go to the second round, that objective hasn\u2019t changed.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to use all the tools we have to score as early as possible but the most important thing is to be prepared and ready for the match<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course we all think about the games to come in the next round but we have to focus first on the next game first. If we win, it\u2019s possible that we win the group then we\u2019ll see who we might get in the next round.”
\nThe opening day win over Lebanon – thanks to an Akram Afif brace and one from Almoez Ali – gave the Maroons a two-point advantage over both China PR and Tajikistan.<\/p>\n
While Qatar seemingly on course for a second win, they will no doubt be mindful that Tajikistan did pick up a 2-1 victory the last time these two teams met in 2012 in an international friendly.<\/p>\n
The Central Asian side showed plenty of heart in their goalless draw with China on Saturday, controlling large parts of the match and head coach Petar Segrt is confident of yet another enterprising display against Qatar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe respect Qatar as the champions and great hosts but for at least 90 minutes tomorrow, we must put that aside,\u201d said Segrt. \u201cWe will try to achieve a good result and make a good impression, to try to get one or three points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot go into a game to get one point, we will try our best. More important is how we behave and how we play our football. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the character of the Tajikistan people to play defensive. So we will try to play our football but we must also respect that Qatar are stronger than China and they will also have their supporters behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament\u2019s only debutants, Tajikistan’s confidence has been boosted by the draw against China PR. <\/p>\n
\u201cBefore we went into the first game, the players were thinking that they are happy to be here but after the performance we showed, they are now starting to think that they have a chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had dreams two years ago to come to the Asian Cup, now we have a new dream, now we want to have the first goal in the Asian Cup.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday’s 3-0 victory against Lebanon stretched Qatar’s AFC Asian Cup winning streak to eight matches – stretching back to their 2019 title triumph – and should the China PR-Lebanon tie end in a draw on Wednesday – Marquez Lopez’s defending champions will be assured of topping Group A. \u201cWe\u2019re going to enter this match in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":929180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-929177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-news","tag-afc","tag-afc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/929180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}