Tajikistan feels like they have already won the Asian Cup twice by qualifying for the last 16 and the quarterfinals on its tournament debut, and it will continue to dream about advancing further, coach Petar Segrt said on Thursday.
Tajikistan qualified for the last 16 with a late win over Lebanon in the group stage and then won over 2019 semifinalist United Arab Emirates on penalties to set up a quarterfinal clash with Jordan.
“We are ready to continue our dream. We live in the moment and we’ll try our best to play Jordan - a very good team, a very good coach. Everyone laughs at me but I believe in my dream. There’s a 50-50 chance we will win,” Segrt told reporters.
“We won’t be happy with just playing a good game. We have a chance to go to the semi-finals. We believe in ourselves... We feel like we’ve won the Asian Cup twice, celebrating like we won the cup when we beat Lebanon and UAE.
“Tajikistan are the black horses of this tournament and the black horses are still running... Everyone was laughing when we had dreams to reach the second round and quarterfinals, but nobody is laughing now,” he said.
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Segrt said the Tajikistan football federation agreed to fly the players’ families, and more supporters, to Qatar, hoping that will give the squad a boost.
“This will give us more energy and power to fight,” defender Tabrez Islomov said.
“From our first day here, not everybody believed in us, even in our homeland. Everyone was waiting for us to come back after the group stage. But we proved to everyone and ourselves that we can make it.
“We saw celebrations in Dushanbe and all around Tajikistan people were celebrating (when we beat UAE). These kinds of feelings were never there for football in Tajikistan before.”
Jordan defeated Iraq with two late goals to qualify for the quarterfinals and coach Hussein Ammouta is wary of Tajikistan, which nearly beat them in a World Cup qualifier in November.
“Tajikistan is a very strong team, they’re very fast. They created problems for us in the World Cup qualifier,” Ammouta said.
“We have to be very cautious. In the squad there is high morale. There are minor injuries but we hope to recover in 24 hours.”
With Saudi Arabia and UAE among the many Arab teams to go home, Ammouta hopes to see its fans support Jordan and Qatar.
“All Arab nations supported Morocco at the World Cup (when they reached the semifinals). Arab fans support each other,” he added.
“We hope to see us and Qatar go towards the end to make a glorious ending.”
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