{"id":12207,"date":"2011-06-08T10:52:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T17:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/06\/08\/sepahan-confident-of-good-showing\/"},"modified":"2011-06-08T10:52:52","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T17:52:52","slug":"sepahan-confident-of-good-showing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/06\/08\/sepahan-confident-of-good-showing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sepahan confident of good showing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/images.the-afc.com\/afc\/comps\/acl\/2011\/300x200\/sepahan_team_3x2.jpg\" width=\"330\" height=\"213\" \/>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>AFC Champions League 2007 finalists Sepahan of Iran lost no time in  declaring their readiness to do battle with Al Sadd after being drawn  with the Qatari giants in the quarter-finals of the continental showcase  on Tuesday.    <br \/><\/strong><br \/>Sepahan will host the first leg at the Fooladshahr Stadium in  Isfahan on 14 September before travelling to Doha for the return leg on  28 September.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a good draw and we were hoping to meet Al Sadd,\u201d said Sepahan manager Majid Basirat.<\/p>\n<p>The  Sepahan official also stressed that the short distance between Isfahan  and Doha would prove to be a distinct advantage for the eventual winners  when it came to the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe distance is short and the  time difference is the same. This will definitely help the winners in  the next stage,\u201d said Basirat.<\/p>\n<p>With the chances of an all-Iranian  semifinal clash between Sepahan and their next door neighbours and  fellow quarter-final qualifiers Zob Ahan gaining strength, Basirat said  the battle lines between the two Esfahan sides would remain drawn until  after the semi-finals when the fans of both sides would join hands to  cheer the Iranian representative left standing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes\u2026we expect them to support us and the other way round but until the semifinals we will be rivals,\u201d said Basirat.<\/p>\n<p>Sepahan  reached the final in 2007 before succumbing to Japan\u2019s Urawa Reds in a  memorable two-leg encounter and Basirat was hopeful that they would be  able to cross the final barrier now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will do our best to win (the title) this time,\u201d said Basirat. \u201cI hope it will be either us or Zob Ahan.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, AFC Champions League 2007 finalists Sepahan of Iran lost no time&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":4083,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12207","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\/22615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}