{"id":18336,"date":"2014-05-29T10:07:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T17:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=18336"},"modified":"2014-05-29T10:11:40","modified_gmt":"2014-05-29T17:11:40","slug":"teymourian-playing-against-iran-wont-be-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2014\/05\/29\/teymourian-playing-against-iran-wont-be-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Teymourian: Playing against Iran won\u2019t be easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

FIFA- HARTBERG, Iran will start the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil\u2122 as rank outsiders, but their players have vowed to make life tough for their fancied opponents.
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\n“No game is going to be easy for us,” midfielder Andranik Teymourian said at a training camp in eastern Austria. “But playing against Iran is not going to be easy for any of our opponents.<\/p>\n

Iran start their fourth World Cup against Argentina, Nigeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina in Group F. They have never made it past the first round and are widely predicted to struggle this time. <\/p>\n

Iran won just one point at their last appearance – thanks to a draw against Angola – at Germany 2006. Their previous tournaments were in 1978 and 1998. They have a record of one win, two draws and six defeats from nine World Cup matches.<\/p>\n

They head to Brazil, however, having topped their Asian qualifying group ahead of Korea Republic – a fact the players will not let anyone forget.<\/p>\n

“This shows the enormous fighting spirit shown by the players, proven in the qualifiers, and the fact that we could qualify is an absolutely tremendous achievement for our team and I personally hope that we can be one of the favourites also,” said Teymourian.<\/p>\n

NEC player Alireza Jahanbakhsh said: “That’s like a window for all the world, all the countries can see it, so we’re going to be our best and get a result in the World Cup.”<\/p>\n

The first test will be against Nigeria on 16 June.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s going to be a tough battle,” said defender Steven Beitashour, a 2012 MLS All-Star player, now with the Vancouver Whitecaps. “If you can start off the World Cup right and get the win, I think you have a good chance of getting to the next round.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIFA- HARTBERG, Iran will start the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil\u2122 as rank outsiders, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25049,"featured_media":15166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":6240,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18336","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\/25049"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}