{"id":11180,"date":"2010-04-24T05:32:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T12:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/04\/24\/finely-balanced-groups-afc-president\/"},"modified":"2010-04-24T05:32:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T12:32:09","slug":"finely-balanced-groups-afc-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/04\/24\/finely-balanced-groups-afc-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Finely balanced groups: AFC President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" alt=\"Hammam02\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Hammam02.jpg\" height=\"216\" width=\"341\" \/>AFC &#8211; DOHA, <strong>AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam has called the AFC Asian Cup Qatar  2011\u2122 draw \u201cunique\u201d, saying that all the groups were finely balanced.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-afc.com\/\">www.the-afc.com<\/a> after the draw ceremony at the Aspire Dome, Bin Hammam said: \u201cIt is a  very interesting and unique draw. All the groups are very well and  finely balanced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact it looks like none of the teams is guaranteed a spot in the  knockout stage. They will all have to work hard for it,\u201d added the AFC  President.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am absolutely convinced that the competition will be intense and  of a very high quality because AFC\u2019s Member Associations are doing a lot  of developmental work for their national teams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, Bin Hammam said in his speech to the draw audience that  Iraq\u2019s win in 2007 had transformed the landscape of Asian football.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIraq\u2019s win in the 2007 edition has reshaped Asian football like  never before. No longer can the traditional powers of the East or West  take their places for granted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe new teams are ambitious and hungry for success. And all this  means well for the fans,\u201d said Bin Hammam.<\/p>\n<p>About hosts Qatar, the AFC President &#8211; who is himself a Qatari &#8211; was  confident that Doha would deliver a high quality tournament.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith its multiethnic population and all-embracing culture, Doha is  truly a home away from home for most of the teams who will be playing  here.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd my country\u2019s love and passion for football should reassure  everyone that this will be one of the best tournaments ever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; DOHA, AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam has called the AFC Asian Cup Qatar&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":2189,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11180","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=11180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}