We could have been better/ Navidkia: I am upset with the performance of my players in the second half!

After his team's victory in the Isfahan derby, Moharram Navidkia expressed his satisfaction with his team's performance in the first half, but he believed that his students could have done better in the second half, especially in using opportunities.

According to "Varzesh Se", Moharram Navidkia, Sepahan's head coach, appeared in a press conference after the victory against Zob Ahan and talked about his team's performance in this match. Sepahan won in this match with the goals of Mohammad Mehdi Lotfi and Kaveh Rezaei and gained three important points in the Isfahan derby.

Navidkia said about the process of the game: "Realistically, if I want to talk about the game, we had a very good performance in the first half and created a lot of chances." We scored two goals and could have scored one or two more, but in the second half we tried to control the game as much as possible. Zob Ahn was sitting back and had one less player, which made the situation difficult for them. For this reason, they took away the spaces from us and we tried to create space by making plays and keeping the ball in the center of the field and our own field. Unfortunately, we lost some bad balls in the center of the pitch in some situations, which led to a couple of fairly good counterattacks by Zov Ahan, one of which turned into a goal.

He continued: "This game was a good match in terms of quality and the chances we created, but I am a little disappointed with our performance in the second half." We should have been able to convert our chances into goals so as not to get stressed for no reason in the final minutes. All in all, we got three very good points, which we really needed and I hope we can keep this trend going.

The head coach of Sepahan further said about his team's performance drop in the second half and the players' decision to keep the result: I talked to my players. Maybe in the second half, they felt that they should not take too much risk and keep the result 2-0. I even tried to make substitutions to improve the attacking situation of the team, because the opponent was ten men and we should have played better in the second half, but we did not provide the quality that I expected.

Navidkia continued: Perhaps one of the reasons for this was the 2-0 lead and the good conditions we had, which made the players play more calmly. This match will be a very important and difficult experience for us so that we don't think that if there is a team of 10 people and there is still one half left, we will definitely win. We have to play very carefully and do our tactical work.

Referring to the difficulty of playing against a team that has one less player, he said: If we cannot put pressure on a team that has ten players, their mental condition will improve. Sometimes teams of ten people, due to the lack of one player, if each of them gives twenty percent more energy, they can try harder than when the team is full. This match was an important lesson for us so that we don't repeat such a mistake again.

In response to a question about conceding a goal when the opponent did not create many opportunities, Navidkia said: "I don't think that Zob Ahn created any special opportunities in the first half." In the second half, I don't think they had such a chance, except for free kicks where they wanted to try their luck with long passes.

He continued: We have to accept that this is football and we cannot say that a team has scored with a single chance, because we may be behind in a match and score with a single chance. This does not make me want to blame my goalkeeper, defense line or midfielders. Only in certain scenes, when recovering the ball, we should not have let loose balls easily lead to counterattacks. We have to talk to the players in detail about this.

Referring to the recent progress of his team, the head coach of Sepahan said: We are winning for the third week in a row and these 9 points have really helped us. I hope we can continue our process, because we have a very good team and we are experiencing good conditions.

Navidkia added: I am not saying that we have reached ideal conditions; After all, every team in the world, even the best teams, has its strengths and weaknesses. We must try to solve our problems and raise our quality even higher. I said last week that the 6-1 victory does not mean that we did not have any problems. In that match, we gave more opportunities to the opponent than in today's game. This time we tried to control the opponent's positions, but we could have done better in the last shots.

In the end, Navidkia explained about the replacement of Mohammad Karimi: Because Hadi Mohammadi had a muscle cramp, we waited a little while to replace Mohammad Karimi with him. When we were about to make the substitution, there was a free kick and we preferred Hadi to stay on the field because he has more reprimanding power. After that, Muhammad came into the game and there was no other special issue.