On the heels of a 1-0 tri­umph over the T&T “So­ca War­riors” in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly match in Tehran, Iran on Thurs­day, Iran’s coach Car­los Queiroz said, he was im­pressed with the lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion by the vis­it­ing T&T team.

Queiroz, a for­mer Por­tu­gal na­tion­al coach who was an as­sis­tant to coach­ing mae­stro Sir Alex Fer­gu­son at Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, told the T&T me­dia in a rare dress­ing room in­ter­view, it was a good out­ing that was ham­pered on­ly by the play­ing con­di­tions.

“To­day, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the pitch was not so good for both teams as it has been rain­ing a lot in Iran but I think at the end of the day, there were lots of ben­e­fits for both sides. Since 2014 we have not met each oth­er,” Queiroz said.

“A lot of things changed, some play­ers still in the (T&T) team, and two or three play­ers still in my team but with the same qual­i­ty, same at­ti­tude and it was great to have this op­por­tu­ni­ty to play against T&T.”

“I was im­pressed with the abil­i­ty of the team to fight, to play and to counter-at­tack. I am sure al­so that un­der oth­er con­di­tions the team would be much bet­ter. It was un­for­tu­nate that with the state of the grass it was not pos­si­ble for the skil­ful play­ers of Iran and es­pe­cial­ly the skil­ful play­ers of T&T to ex­press them­selves.”

Hav­ing played against the T&T team four years ago, Queiroz said he has seen tremen­dous im­prove­ments, say­ing the team is much more com­pact, more ag­gres­sive and more or­gan­ised with young fresh blood in it.

“I think you guys have a good fu­ture ahead of you,” said Queiroz. “I want to show my grat­i­tude for this op­por­tu­ni­ty to work to­geth­er with T&T. It is al­ways a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty for our play­ers be­cause we play against play­ers with good tech­nique, speed, great at­ti­tude and phys­i­cal pow­er, and it’s al­ways an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to learn and progress.”

Iran won the match cour­tesy of a lone strike from Karim Ansar­i­fard in the 50th minute at the Aza­di Sta­di­um.

Queiroz’s op­po­si­tion num­ber Den­nis Lawrence, the T&T coach al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“It was a very good, com­pet­i­tive game. Ex­act­ly the type of game we ex­pect­ed. As I said be­fore, Iran is a very ex­pe­ri­enced team and I think tonight (Thurs­day) both teams ben­e­fit­ted from the ex­er­cise. I was pleased with the ef­fort of my boys but as I said, well done to Iran on the vic­to­ry tonight (Thurs­day).

“You can see the Irani team is well coached. They all knew what they were do­ing, but we came pre­pared for the game so it was not go­ing to be easy for them. I felt in the first half we al­lowed Iran too much pos­ses­sion and we tried to cor­rect it in the sec­ond half which I thought we did. There weren’t many chances for us but we got a few.”