Mehdi Rajabzadeh gave the Isfahan-based team a lead in the 3rd minute from the penalty spot.

Andre Ionescu equalized the match in the 20th minute in Isfahan’s Fooladshahr Stadium.

Zob Ahan’s striker Morteza Tabrizi scored a brace in the 83rd and 90th minutes.

“I am very happy after advance to the ACL group stage. We were under pressure because the Indian team played very defensively,” Zob Ahan coach Amir Ghalenoei said in the post-match news conference.

Zob Ahan advanced to the AFC Champions League Group B, where the team will face Qatar’s Al Duhail, Al Wahda of the UAE, and Lokomotiv Tashkent of Uzbekistan.

After this loss, Aizawl gets disqualified from AFC Champions League but will get a direct entry into Group E of AFC Cup.

They are drawn with New Radiant S.C. from Maldives, Abahani Limited Dhaka from Bangladesh and the winner from the play-off of Central Asia.

The 2018 AFC Champions League is the 37th edition of Asia’s premier club football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and the 16th under the current AFC Champions League title.

The winners of the 2018 AFC Champions League will qualify as the AFC representative at the 2018 FIFA Club World Cup in the United Arab Emirates.

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