{"id":15425,"date":"2013-06-19T08:32:25","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T15:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=15425"},"modified":"2013-06-19T08:33:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T15:33:00","slug":"shaikh-salman-congratulates-asian-trio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2013\/06\/19\/shaikh-salman-congratulates-asian-trio\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaikh Salman congratulates Asian trio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>AFC President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa has congratulated Iran, Korea Republic and Australia for making it to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The three joined Asian champions Japan, who have already qualified for the world\u2019s premier football competition. Iran edged past Korea Republic 1-0 in their crucial final match to top Group A while Australia confirmed their berth by defeating Iraq 1-0. Uzbekistan sidelined Qatar 5-1 but missed out on goal difference and will now play Jordan, the 1-0 victors over Oman, to determine Asia\u2019s fifth-placed team.<\/p>\n<p>The two third-placed teams from each group &#8211; Uzbekistan and Jordan &#8211; will battle out in a home-and-away encounter on September 6 and 10 and the winner will take on CONMEBOL\u2019s fifth-placed team in an inter-continental playoff, to be played in November 2013, for a place in the FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would like to congratulate the three teams who have earned their deserving places for the FIFA World Cup. It is encouraging to see that the competition is growing in Asia and these three teams could only confirm their qualification on the last day of the qualifiers,\u201d Shaikh Salman said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIran have once again proved that they are one of the Asian powerhouses after missing out on a berth in the 2010 FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKorea Republic is the most successful Asian team in the history of the FIFA World Cup and I hope they will improve upon their previous showing in their ninth appearance in Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAustralia have become a dominant force in Asian football since joining AFC in 2006 and I am sure they will have a point to prove when they take the field in Brazil next year,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would also like to wish Uzbekistan and Jordan the very best for their home-and-away tie and hope that the best team will represent Asia in the inter-continental playoff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, AFC President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa has congratulated Iran,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":3473,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15425","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\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}