Uzbekistan\u2019s quest to emulate, if not better, their 2011 achievement of a fourth place finish came to an end when Pedro Correia scored the winning penalty for Qatar after goalkeeper Meshaal Barsham had saved Jaloliddin Masharipov’s spot-kick, with the defending champions winning the shoot-out 3-2.
\n\u201cThe players need to be proud of what they achieved today. They fought and gave everything they had, but in the end we lost in the penalty shootout. Having penalties decide the game is always tricky. It\u2019s a mental game,\u201d said Katanec.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe defended well and even after we conceded first, we still played better than Qatar, and created some promising chances. They were initially struggling to break down our defence and even though I\u2019m disappointed with the result, I\u2019m happy with the performance of my players.”<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when the score was level at 1-1, we pressed and chased every ball. The players were visibly lacking energy at the end. It’s unfortunate we lost on penalties. Our campaign suffered setbacks as we missed key players. <\/p>\n
\u201cWinning a tournament requires a deep squad, and injuries limited our options. The absence of players like Eldor Shomurodov impacted our rotation choices. Even if we progressed further, the team’s recovery would have been challenging.\u201d
\nThe 60-year-old Slovenian hopes the lessons learned from the defeat will push his players to improve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saddened by this defeat, this is football. Some players need to learn the responsibility that comes with taking penalties. However, both in attitude and in fighting until the end, I\u2019m very happy and satisfied with the team’s performance in all five games in Qatar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players were fatigued, but I hope to see them back soon, including those who were absent from this tournament. We have a young generation that gained valuable experience. It was a positive learning experience for some of them, and I anticipate future success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uzbekistan\u2019s quest to emulate, if not better, their 2011 achievement of a fourth place finish came to an end when Pedro Correia scored the winning penalty for Qatar after goalkeeper Meshaal Barsham had saved Jaloliddin Masharipov’s spot-kick, with the defending champions winning the shoot-out 3-2. \u201cThe players need to be proud of what they achieved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":937507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-937506","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\/937506","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=937506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/937507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}