If anything, advancing to the Round of 16 has made Tajikistan even hungrier and, more importantly, placed them on an equal footing with the United Arab Emirates – who they meet on Sunday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe buzz around our historic win is now a thing of the past and I don\u2019t want the players to feel that kind of pressure with every match,\u201d said Segrt.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we are no longer a lesser team and whether our match against the UAE lasts 90 minutes or 120, I have full faith in my team and know they\u2019re going to give their best.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Croatian said Tajikistan will face the UAE confident of winning, having played to a goalless draw with the 1996 AFC Asian Cup runners-up last year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe met UAE not so long ago and held them to a 0-0 game, but that was a friendly and they\u2019ve changed a lot since then. However, the same holds true for Tajikistan. We will fight till the last minute and make the time away from our families count.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had some minor setbacks with the team, with some small injuries and cautions but the UAE are not without trouble either. I can say with conviction that we have a 50-50 chance of reaching the quarter-finals.\u201d<\/p>\n
UAE head coach Paulo Bento acknowledged the threat posed by the Crowns and agreed with Segrt on the two teams being equally capable of achieving victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a big mistake to take Tajikistan lightly after all they have done in the competition so far,\u201d said Bento. \u201cThey are very good at building their game from the back and have also displayed a good offensive approach, so I\u2019m certain that they will demand a lot from our team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are at the stage of the competition where we don\u2019t get a do-over and thus, we are going to have to avoid giving into Tajikistan\u2019s strong points. We are not considering ourselves favourites and will need to perfect several aspects of our game to come out superior.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If anything, advancing to the Round of 16 has made Tajikistan even hungrier and, more importantly, placed them on an equal footing with the United Arab Emirates – who they meet on Sunday. \u201cThe buzz around our historic win is now a thing of the past and I don\u2019t want the players to feel that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":934319,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-934318","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\/934318","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=934318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/934319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=934318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=934318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=934318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}