{"id":11699,"date":"2010-12-06T09:57:48","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T17:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/12\/06\/breaking-news-diego-maradona-will-visit-iran\/"},"modified":"2010-12-06T09:57:48","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T17:57:48","slug":"breaking-news-diego-maradona-will-visit-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/12\/06\/breaking-news-diego-maradona-will-visit-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Diego Maradona will visit Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: left;\" src=\"http:\/\/answers.bettor.com\/images\/Articles\/thumbs\/large\/2010_12_4-2010_12_4_6_22_50-jpg-46213.jpg\" \/>Bettor &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Argentina football legend Diego Armando Maradona might pay a  visit to Iran soon. This was stated by the Iranian head of Football,  Abbas Torabian<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>This possible visit comes amidst rumors that the  former Napoli man will perhaps coach the Iranian national side in the  future. Ali Kashaffian, President of Iranian National Football  Federation denied these rumors and said in a statement that the football  legend is only visiting the country.<\/p>\n<p>Maradona has always dreamt of visiting Iran and he even gave one of his famous shirts to \u2018the Iranian nation\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The  Argentinean is not the only famous personality from Latin America who  will visit Iran. Bolivian president, Evo Morales paid a visit to Iran  and even played football with the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  in Tehran.<\/p>\n<p>In that tour, Evo Morales even had a training session with Tabriz\u2019s team, Teraktorsazi.<\/p>\n<p>It  is still to be known what the conclusion of Maradona\u2019s tour will be but  rumors say that the Argentina legend might be visiting the country for a  public relations tour for the Argentine national squad but he has also  been linked with a coaching job with the Iranian national team.<\/p>\n<p>Local  papers in Iran have already been suggesting that Iran\u2019s Football  Federation may be looking to fire current coach Afshin Ghotbi to make  way for Diego Maradona.<\/p>\n<p>The former Argentina coach guided the  Argentine national team to the quarterfinals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup  in South Africa but had a hard time with the media during his tenure as  the coach of Argentina. The controversial Argentine was later sacked by  the Argentinean Football Federation and was replaced by Alvaro Batista.<\/p>\n<p>Diego  Maradona has already expressed his desire to return to managing and is  looking for a suitable club or country to start over. The 1986 World Cup  winner has always been surrounded with controversies throughout his  career but is widely acknowledged as the best player South America has  ever produced.<\/p>\n<p>It would be a great coup for Iranian Football if  Diego Maradona decides to coach the national team as it will raise the  profile of the game in the country and in neighboring countries like  Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq even more.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bettor &#8211; TEHRAN, Argentina football legend Diego Armando Maradona might pay a visit to Iran&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3468,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}