{"id":11503,"date":"2010-09-22T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/22\/pohang-zobahan-2nd-leg-preview\/"},"modified":"2010-09-22T06:00:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T13:00:10","slug":"pohang-zobahan-2nd-leg-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/22\/pohang-zobahan-2nd-leg-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Pohang &#8211; Zobahan (2nd Leg Preview)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><span id=\"divAdnetKeyword\">GOAL &#8211; <strong>Defending Asian champions Pohang Steelers  will take on rapidly <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/media.farsnews.net\/Media\/8906\/Images\/jpg\/A0916\/A0916346.jpg\" height=\"228\" width=\"380\" \/>improving Iranian outfit Zobahan in what is  undoubtedly the match to watch on the continent this week.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Caretaker  manager Park Chang-Hyun has promised, &#8220;You will see a better tempo from  us in the second leg. The team will put up a superb performance  particularly in the second half.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The club have meanwhile  offered free entry for Pohang fans into &#8216;The Steelyard&#8217; in order to drum  up as much local support as possible, as veteran striker Seol Ki-Hyun  prepares to give the K-League outfit the edge they need.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was  really disappointing to miss out on the World Cup and, for a while, I  found it difficult to accept the situation,&#8221; Seol told www.the-afc.com.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I  came to the K-League because I really wanted to play in the World Cup,  but now I want to win the AFC Champions League with Pohang.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The  Steelers will be looking to stir up memories of that famous quarter  final victory over Uzbek outfit Bunyodkor in last season&#8217;s ACL, where  they overtuned a 3-1 deficit by crushing their opponents 4-1 at home.<strong><br \/> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/u.goal.com\/109600\/109685hp2.jpg\" height=\"217\" width=\"349\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>On The Rise<br \/><\/strong><br \/>An emerging force in Iranian football,  Zobahan have embarked on an exciting run in Asia and were impressive in  their first leg against the defending champions.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re in form  domestically where they sit atop the Iran Pro League and will look to  the likes of international striker Mohammad Khalatbari, who returns from  suspension after missing out on the first leg.<\/p>\n<p>Zobahan also  boast the talents of the prolific Mehdi Rajabzadeh, who netted the  decisive penalty in the first leg and scored four goals for former  employers Mes Kerman in the group stages of the ACL this season.<\/p>\n<p>Brazilian  Igor Castro was similarly impressive last time out, scoring the opener  against Pohang and winning the penalty converted by Rajabzadeh and he  will be looking to again have a big influence.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s in defence  though that this tie could be won and lost and Zobahan will be counting  on the fact that they have the best defensive record in this year&#8217;s ACL,  with only four goals conceded in eight games.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GOAL &#8211; Defending Asian champions Pohang Steelers will take on rapidly improving Iranian outfit Zobahan&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":2626,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503","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=11503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}