The pressure's on: Pourheidari

FootballAsia - Despite his ice-cool exterior and calm demeanor when dealing with the masses of Iran's media, Esteghlal coach Mansour Pourheidari knows that a nation is banking on his team to succeed in the Asian Club Championship to help ease the pain of Iran's failure to make the 2002 FIFA World Cup Finals. "The biggest problem is the expectation of the people at the moment because our people got very disappointed and angry after we were knocked out of the World Cup. Now they look to Esteghlal to give some relief," Pourheidari told FootballAsia. "Iranian people are very emotional and when you talk about logic and talk about feeling, you are talking about two different factors in football. "Unfortunately when our people talk about football they talk with emotion and expect us to win this easily." A victory over Korean side Anyang LG Cheetahs in Wednesday's semi-final is the first step on the road to a remarkable record in the Asian Club Championship for Pourheidari. As a player, he set up the winner for Taj (the pre-Iranian Revolution name of Esteghlal) in the 2-1 defeat of Haopel Tel Aviv in the 1970 final. Twenty years later as head coach Pourheidari guided Esteghlal to the 1990 title with victory over defending champions Liaoning.