{"id":19680,"date":"2014-11-29T09:07:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T17:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=19680"},"modified":"2014-11-29T12:44:49","modified_gmt":"2014-11-29T20:44:49","slug":"mahdavikia-we-never-lost-hope-against-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2014\/11\/29\/mahdavikia-we-never-lost-hope-against-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahdavikia: We Never Lost Hope Against Australia [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tasnim &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0<strong>On the anniversary of Team Melli&#8217;s memorable qualification to the 1998 World Cup Finals, former Iran captain Mehdi Mahdavikia looks back on\u00a0qualifying\u00a0against Australia. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Former Iran winger Mehdi Mahdavikia said of the 1997 match that they believed their side could arrest the deficit to Australia and secure a World Cup spot.<\/p>\n<p>On November 29, 1997, the Iranian football team fought back from two goals down to draw Australia 2-2 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of 85,000 <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iranfootballteam.com\/Videos\/Clips\/Iran-Australia-2004-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"295\" height=\"211\" \/>people.<\/p>\n<p>Two teams drew 1-1 in Tehran\u2019s Azadi Stadium one week earlier and the Iranian team booked a place in the 1998 World Cup on goal difference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt appeared Australia had qualified but a spectator ran onto the field and broke the net. Afterward, we put the Australian team under pressure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe never lost our hopes in that match and fought until the last moment and drew 2-2 with the Australian team,\u201d Mahdavikia added.<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H2lG87Atx3o\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H2lG87Atx3o<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tasnim &#8211; TEHRAN,\u00a0On the anniversary of Team Melli&#8217;s memorable qualification to the 1998 World Cup&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":19681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":5267,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19680","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\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}