{"id":53313,"date":"2025-05-11T06:39:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T13:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=53313"},"modified":"2025-05-11T06:39:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T13:39:31","slug":"alexis-guendouz-im-pleasantly-surprised-by-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2025\/05\/11\/alexis-guendouz-im-pleasantly-surprised-by-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexis Guendouz: I&#8217;m pleasantly surprised by Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Trained at Saint-\u00c9tienne, then moved to Algeria, and now at 29 years old, Alexis Guendouz is in Iran, defending the colors of Persepolis in Tehran.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Since last October, he has gradually established himself as a regular starter with the Algerian national team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first time I was contacted by Iranian team Persepolis  I thought, \u201cWow, Iran indeed!\u201d I immediately called Bryan Dabo, whom I knew from Saint-\u00c9tienne. I knew he had signed with Sepahan in 2023. He told me, \u2018If the contract suits you, forget everything you\u2019ve heard in the media or what you\u2019ve been told about this country. Come\u2014you&#8217;re going to live something incredible, especially at Persepolis.\u2019 So, I signed, and honestly, I am pleasantly surprised by Iran,\u201d Guendouz said in an interview with lequipe.fr.<br \/>\n\u201cPersepolis are Iran\u2019s most successful club, the most supported in the country and even among the diaspora abroad. They have excellent facilities and invest heavily to attract players to this league. I\u2019m in Tehran, and there\u2019s a fierce rivalry with Esteghlal\u2014trust me, the derby is something else. It\u2019s similar to Algeria, with incredible fervor,\u201d the goalie said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPersonally, things are going very well (14 clean sheets in 35 matches across all competitions). We hope to finish second and qualify again for the Asian Champions League. This season, we narrowly missed out on the second phase. The competition was disrupted due to geopolitical issues\u2014playing in Qatar or Dubai without our passionate fans. When we host a team from Qatar in Qatar, it\u2019s definitely not the same atmosphere,\u201d Guendouz stated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Trained at Saint-\u00c9tienne, then moved to Algeria, and now at 29&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":53314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,172,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-persepolis","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":1697,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53313","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=53313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53315,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53313\/revisions\/53315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}