{"id":16521,"date":"2013-11-28T16:57:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-29T00:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=16521"},"modified":"2013-11-29T06:42:17","modified_gmt":"2013-11-29T14:42:17","slug":"i-deserved-to-win-afc-player-of-the-year-nekounam-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2013\/11\/28\/i-deserved-to-win-afc-player-of-the-year-nekounam-says\/","title":{"rendered":"I deserved to win AFC player of the year, Nekounam says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0<strong>Iran captain Javad Nekounam said that he should have won the 2013 AFC Player of the Year award.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Zheng Zhi, the captain of triple Chinese Super League champion Guangzhou Evergrande, was awarded AFC Player of the Year on Tuesday as the midfielder inspired his club to China&#8217;s long-awaited Asian top podium in the AFC Champions League on November 9.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe that I deserved to win the prestigious award. The Iranian football team also should have won the best national team award,\u201d Nekounam was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChinese football team has failed to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. They have not yet advanced to the 2015 AFC Asian Cup as well but won their captain won the award*,\u201d Esteghlal midfielder added.<\/p>\n<p>Nekounam had said before the ceremony he is very happy to be in Kuala Lumpur and sit alongside the other two very deserved nominees.<\/p>\n<p><em>* quote corrected by Persianfootball.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0Iran captain Javad Nekounam said that he should have won the 2013&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3591,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16521","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=16521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}