{"id":11502,"date":"2010-09-22T05:56:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T12:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/22\/iran-has-learnt-how-to-win-ghotbi-says\/"},"modified":"2010-09-22T05:56:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T12:56:48","slug":"iran-has-learnt-how-to-win-ghotbi-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/22\/iran-has-learnt-how-to-win-ghotbi-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran has learnt how to win, Ghotbi says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<div align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mehrnews.com\/mehr_media\/image\/2010\/04\/532326_orig.jpg\" alt=\"http:\/\/www.mehrnews.com\/mehr_media\/image\/2010\/04\/532326_orig.jpg\" height=\"320\" width=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>AFP  &#8211;\u00a0 <strong>Iranian nation football team coach Afshin Ghotbi has said that he  hopes to guide his side to a fifth title win in the West Asia Football  Federation (WAFF) championship to be held in Jordan.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Iran, who previously won the title in 2000, 2004, 2007, 2008 are in Group 1 along with Bahrain and Oman.<\/p>\n<p>Hosts Jordan are in Group 2 with Syria and Kuwait, while 2002 winners Iraq will play against Yemen and Palestine in group 3.<\/p>\n<p>The tournament runs through September 24 until October 3.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It will be an interesting tournament,&#8221; Ghotbi told reporters here shortly before he and his squad left for Jordan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We  have achieved good results playing against teams from east Asia and we  hope to do so with teams from the west of the continent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the  buildup to the tournament Iran beat China 2-0 on September 3 and four  days later won against South Korea 1-0. Both matches were away from  home.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are expecting to come home as champions, we have  learned to think of winning in all circumstances. I only plan for  victory,&#8221; Ghotbi said, adding that team spirit in his squad was high.<\/p>\n<p>Ghotbi said that taking part in the WAFF championship would be a good practice for the Iranians ahead of the Asian Cup 2011.<\/p>\n<p>His  comments on the reason for Team Melli participating in the WAFF&#8217;s  tournament were echoed by the chairman of Iran&#8217;s Football Federation Ali  Kafashin.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have played against big teams like China and South  Korea but we have not played against West Asian nations,&#8221; he told the  ISNA news agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It will good to gain experience playing against these teams who will be playing against us in the Asian Cup.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ghotbi  previously worked with the US national team before a long stint  assisting Dutch coaches Guus Hiddink, Dick Advocaat and then Pim Verbeek  with the South Koreans.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFP &#8211;\u00a0 Iranian nation football team coach Afshin Ghotbi has said that he hopes to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":4451,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11502","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=11502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}