{"id":10931,"date":"2010-01-29T07:59:37","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T15:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/01\/29\/nothing-against-ali-daei-says-mahdavikia\/"},"modified":"2010-01-29T07:59:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T15:59:37","slug":"nothing-against-ali-daei-says-mahdavikia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/01\/29\/nothing-against-ali-daei-says-mahdavikia\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing against Ali Daei, says Mahdavikia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\">AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>There is no great divide between returning Iranian star Mehdi Mahdavikia and his<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right; margin: 10px;\" alt=\"TAMRINE_KIA_REZA_2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/TAMRINE_KIA_REZA_2.jpg\" height=\"300\" width=\"450\" \/>former Team Melli colleague Ali Daei.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Mahdavikia was forced to make this clarification after rumours started to fester that the former Hamburg and Eintracht Frankfurt player refused to return to his old club Persepolis because of Daei.<\/p>\n<p>The former AFC Player of the Year has joined upstart club Steel Azin to mark his return to Iranian football after 11 years in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, I did not go back to Persepolis but it has nothing to do with Ali Daei,\u201d Mahdavikia told journalists on his arrival back in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is my good friend and we were teammates in Team Melli for a long time. He was also my coach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steel Azin are fifth in the Iran Pro League with 36 points from 24 matches and, with 10 matches left, still have a strong chance of qualifying for next season\u2019s AFC Champions League.<\/p>\n<p>Daei, who coached Mahdavikia in the Iran national team, also said there were no issues between the two players.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish him all the success,\u201d Daei was quoted as saying. \u201cHe has done a lot for Iranian football and was one of the greatest footballers from our country to play in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mahdavikia said it was the right time to leave Eintracht, whose coach Michael Skibbe left him out of the first-team line-up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy priority was to come back to my family in Iran because we have been apart for a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFootball wise, my coach in Eintracht Frankfurt kept me on the bench for no reason. I talked to him and he did not have faith in me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was as easy as this. I believe coming back to your own country has been a trend for foreign-based [Asian] players recently and I am happy to be here again.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, There is no great divide between returning Iranian star Mehdi Mahdavikia and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c14-ipl-league-persian-gulf-cup"],"views":6457,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}