{"id":11515,"date":"2010-09-25T07:27:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T14:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/25\/ghotbi-stresses-waff-importance\/"},"modified":"2010-09-25T07:27:38","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T14:27:38","slug":"ghotbi-stresses-waff-importance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/25\/ghotbi-stresses-waff-importance\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghotbi stresses WAFF importance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ghotbi_press_conference.jpg\" height=\"266\" width=\"386\" \/><\/p>\n<p>AFC &#8211; AMMAN, <strong>Afshin Ghotbi is confident his Iran side can not only go on to  successfully defend their West Asian Football Federation title, but  that they can continue to improve going into the finals of the AFC Asian  Cup Qatar 2011\u2122 (January 7-29). <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Iran handed Bahrain a 3-0 defeat to kick off their challenge for the  2010 West Asian title with Hadi Aghili scoring with a pair of almost  identical headers to give Team Melli a two-goal lead at halftime. <\/p>\n<p>A third by Mehrdad Oladi three minutes after the restart ended the  game as a contest and underlined Iran\u2019s superiority over a Bahrain side  missing eight of their regular starting line-up. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis tournament is very important for us because we have, in our  group at the Asian Cup, two other Middle Eastern teams,\u201d said the former  Pirouzi coach. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlaying here is a good exercise for us to prepare for that and to  familiarise ourselves with the circumstances of playing abroad. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe team has a fantastic mentality on and off the field and I&#8217;m sure  the team can do well and I&#8217;m very optimistic, not only about this  tournament but about the Asian Cup.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Despite playing a weakened Bahrain side, Ghotbi was also at pains to point out that his team was far from full strength also. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was clear we were the better team and from the first to the last  whistle we showed the quality we have in our team even though we don\u2019t  have some key players with us,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have continued our winning streak, that\u2019s now seven games in a row, which is remarkable. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe now look like a championship team and to control the game shows  the depth of this team and the standard there is in Iranian football.  Hopefully in each game we will get stronger.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In the other match of the opening day, Jordan and Syria drew 1-1. The  hosts took the lead through Abdullah Khaled Dib in the 13th minute but  Mohamed Zino restored parity for Syria six minutes from time and the  score stayed that way until the final whistle.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; AMMAN, Afshin Ghotbi is confident his Iran side can not only go on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":2561,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11515","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=11515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}