{"id":28338,"date":"2017-06-11T10:17:34","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T17:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=28338"},"modified":"2017-06-11T10:17:34","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T17:17:34","slug":"montazeri-believes-iranian-success-due-to-years-of-hard-work-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2017\/06\/11\/montazeri-believes-iranian-success-due-to-years-of-hard-work-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Montazeri believes Iranian success due to years of hard work [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Pejman Montazeri believes the Islamic Republic of Iran\u2019s dominant form in Group A of the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 qualifiers is down to years of hard work as Team Melli stand on the brink of advancing to the global showpiece.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Carlos Queiroz\u2019s side sits four points clear at the top of the standings after claiming five wins and two draws from their seven qualifying games with a defence that has still yet to be breached.<\/p>\n<p>Iran now welcomes Uzbekistan to Azadi Stadium on Monday needing a win to qualify for a second successive FIFA World Cup for the first time in their history.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pejman Montazeri: Reaching second round of FIFA World Cup is our main goal\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tlw9FbYr--0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring the past four or five years we worked very hard and we had a bunch of young guys who are now mature enough and we think we have reached the goal we were looking for,\u201d said Montazeri.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe team is ready and we are strong defensively and play very compact. I think we reached the goal we wanted to achieve five years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Qatar-based defender played all three games at the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014 as Iran claimed one point from three games and exited at the first hurdle.<\/p>\n<p>But the points tally does not tell the whole story as the Asian powerhouse came within seconds of holding Argentina to a scoreless draw only for Lionel Messi to pop up with a stoppage-time winner.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from a quarter-final exit to Iraq in the AFC Asian Cup Australia 2015, IR Iran has gone from strength to strength since and, should they progress to Russia, will head to the tournament with high hopes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConcerning the last World Cup, one of the best memories was coming back to Iran and people being so happy with how we performed,\u201d added Montazeri.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we can qualify for this World Cup, people will now be expecting us to get through the group stage, so reaching the second round would be our main goal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it\u2019s better to talk about this once we qualify because we still haven\u2019t and we have one of our most important games of the past seven or eight years, so we are only focusing on this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Uzbekistan arrives in Tehran in third place in Group A with eyes firmly fixed on catching the second-placeD Korea Republic, who stand a point above them in an automatic qualification spot.<\/p>\n<p>And the hosts will be wary of Monday\u2019s visitors after the Central Asians came away with all three points following a 1-0 win in the 2014 qualification campaign almost five years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know it will probably be one of the most difficult games we have had,\u201d said Montazeri, whose side defeated Uzbekistan 1-0 in Tashkent earlier in the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know them very well and have analyzed them for two weeks so we know it\u2019s going to be a tough game. But everyone is focused and we hope to get the result we need.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, Pejman Montazeri believes the Islamic Republic of Iran\u2019s dominant form in Group&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":28339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,89,91,93,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":4912,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28338","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=28338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}