{"id":13168,"date":"2012-09-28T19:29:02","date_gmt":"2012-09-29T02:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/09\/28\/former-esteghlal-captain-hangs-up-his-boots\/"},"modified":"2012-09-28T19:29:02","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T02:29:02","slug":"former-esteghlal-captain-hangs-up-his-boots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/09\/28\/former-esteghlal-captain-hangs-up-his-boots\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Esteghlal captain hangs up his boots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tehrantimes.com\/cache\/multithumb_thumbs\/c_330_235_16777215_0___images_stories_edim_13-Majidi.jpg\" width=\"300\" style=\"margin-left: 10px; float: right;\" \/>TEHRAN TIMES &#8211; TEHRAN,<strong>\u00a0Former Esteghlal\u2019s striker Farhad Majidi announced his retirement on Friday at the age 36 after Esteghlal refused to offer him a contract extension.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Majidi left Esteghlal due to personal problems and joined the Qatari side Al Gharrafe on loan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the hardest decision I&#8217;ve ever made. Fifteen years ago when I wore the blue jersey of Esteghlal for the first time I never imagined that on day I would have this huge fans support,\u201d Majidi said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Majidi scored 44 goals in 131 matches for Esteghlal. For the most part of his career, he was in the United Arab Emirates where he played for Al-Wasl, Al-Ain, Al-Ahli and Al-Nasr.<\/p>\n<p>In 1999, Majidi&#8217;s great performance at Esteghlal attracted Rapid Vienna to recruit him for one season. However, the salary he was asking for a permanent transfer to Austria was not accepted by the Austrians, and they released him.<\/p>\n<p>His goal against Chinese side Dalian in AFC Champions League semifinal helped Al-Ain to reach the final match, eventually winning the trophy for the first time in the club&#8217;s history. <\/p>\n<p>At international level Majidi played 45 games for Iran and scored 10 goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TEHRAN TIMES &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0Former Esteghlal\u2019s striker Farhad Majidi announced his retirement on Friday at the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c14-ipl-league-persian-gulf-cup"],"views":2936,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13168","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=13168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}