{"id":11142,"date":"2010-04-12T14:37:28","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T21:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/04\/12\/100000-fans-would-help-esteghlal-majidi\/"},"modified":"2010-04-12T14:37:28","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T21:37:28","slug":"100000-fans-would-help-esteghlal-majidi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/04\/12\/100000-fans-would-help-esteghlal-majidi\/","title":{"rendered":"100,000 fans would help Esteghlal: Majidi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Esteghlal captain Farhad Majidi is hoping for three things that <\/strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left:  10px; float: right;\" alt=\"MajidiCelebrating1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/MajidiCelebrating1.jpg\" height=\"272\" width=\"409\" \/><strong>would  make passage into the last 16 of the AFC Champions extra special. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He wants victory over Group A opponents Al Ahli, a record 100,000  fans at Azadi Stadium, and he wants to score.<\/p>\n<p>A win over Ahli  would guarantee Esteghlal a spot in the last 16. The Iranians lead Group  A on eight points, just one ahead of second-place Gharafa and two in  front of Ahli.<\/p>\n<p>They beat Ahli 2-1 away on MD1 and the last time  they played at home \u2013 a 3-0 win over Gharafa on MD3 \u2013 they drew 70,000  fans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had 70,000 fans against Al Gharafa and I believe that  if we can get 100,000 for Ahli, we can beat them and finish our task of  qualifying to the next round,\u201d Majidi told the-afc.com.<\/p>\n<p>If the  blue side of Tehran can pack the Azadi with 100,000 fans, it would be an  all-time record for the ACL.<\/p>\n<p>Majidi has scored four goals so far  in the 2010 competition and is one of five players who trail Al Sadd\u2019s  Leandro by one goal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the goals that I have scored in this  tournament were the result of teamwork,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery striker dreams  to be the top goalscorer and I am no exception.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am pretty sure  I can overtake Leandro.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Esteghlal lost in their last Iran Pro  League match, going down 2-1 at Saba Battery. However, the defeat has  not affected the team going into their ACL assignment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese  things do not distract us,\u201d said Majidi. \u201cWe are fully focused on  Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur group is still wide open so we won\u2019t  underestimate anyone. We have studied Ahli&#8217;s players and worked on how  to control them during our training sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, Esteghlal captain Farhad Majidi is hoping for three things that would make&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":10997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":5719,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11142","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\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}