ACL Round of 16 - 1st Leg: KSA's Al Ittihad 2-1 Iran's Zob Ahan FC
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Zob Ahan football team got a valuable away goal, but it was Al Ittihad who walked away with a 2-1 win at the Zabeel Stadium in the first leg of the 2019 AFC Champions League Round of 16 Monday night.
The eventual winner of the last 16 tie - the return leg will be played on August 12 - will face either Al Ahli Saudi FC or Al Hilal SFC in the quarter-finals.
The defeat was Zob Ahan's first in the 2019 AFC Champions League, having won three and drawn three matches in the group stage, the-afc.com reported.
Veteran midfielder Ghasem Haddadifar stepped up to take the free-kick and curled it over the wall and into the top corner of Fawaz Al Qarni’s net to gift Zob Ahan a valuable away goal in the seventh minute.
The Saudis response was instant, and it was Luis Jimenez who atoned for his mistake. Zob Ahan defender Masoud Ebrahimdzadeh attempted to clear an Emiliano Vecchio cross, but the ball bounced off the crossbar and into the path of Jimenez who swept home the equalizer on his debut in the ninth minute.
The Zobahan defense once again yielded to the pressure in the 72nd minute when defender Ziyad Al Sahafi found the back of the net with a header to make it 2-1.
With no clear-cut chances in the remaining minutes, Zob Ahan was dealt its first defeat in the 2019 AFC Champions League, but goes into the second leg next week in Doha still well-placed to advance to the quarter-finals for the first time since 2011.