PLDC - Tehran, Esteghlal's coach heavily criticized his team's performance.

Even though his team defeated Saba, Ghalenoei was disappointed in his players' performance. In the post-game press conference, he said, "I would like to apologize to all the fans because of the terrible game we played against Saba. In the second half we played so bad, that I haven't seen such weak display in all of my coaching career."

He continued, "In the last 20 minutes, some of the subs that came in for Saba were so good that they could have beat us. If it wasn't for Rahmati's spectacular performance, we would have lost."

Regarding the officiating of the match, he said, "It's better that I don't talk about the referees. However, Hanif Omranzadeh swears that he didn't commit a foul. And a few times the referee should have called fouls for us, but he didn't, and these incidents turned out to be dangerous."

Ghalenoei held his players responsible, and he criticized, "We were very weak in the second half. From our team, only Rahmati played good. Nazari and Akbarpour played sub-par and I must punish them. I think we must change our formation and tactics, and some of our players' mentalities must also change. Some of them think that they can only be effective if they start (rather than being subbed in) and this mentality is wrong. I will punish Siavash Akbarpour because of this mentality. I might send him home to give him some time to think about this and change his way of thinking."

By: Arman Tamjidi