{"id":11524,"date":"2010-09-27T03:47:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T10:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/27\/road-to-the-finals-irans-record-equalling-feat\/"},"modified":"2010-09-27T03:47:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T10:47:48","slug":"road-to-the-finals-irans-record-equalling-feat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2010\/09\/27\/road-to-the-finals-irans-record-equalling-feat\/","title":{"rendered":"Road to the Finals: Iran\u2019s record-equalling feat"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\">AFC &#8211; <strong>Three-time Asian champions Iran comfortably topped Group E, finishing  the<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/images.the-afc.com\/afc\/comps\/asian_cup\/2011\/qualifiers\/ac2011_qualifier_sin_irn_3x2.jpg\" height=\"264\" width=\"396\" \/> campaign a clear five points ahead of Jordan to ensure their  participation in the AFC Asian Cup finals for a record-equalling 12th  time. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Iran, joint holders of the AFC Asian Cup appearance record with  Korea Republic who were spared the qualification round after finishing  third at the 2007 tournament, began in style, hitting Singapore for a  six without reply.<\/p>\n<p>Mageed Gholamnejhad began the scoring for Team  Melli two minutes before the interval and veteran Karim Bagheri made it  2-0 seven minutes into the restart.<\/p>\n<p>Gholamreza Rezaei scored  their third three minutes later while Mazyar Zare made it 4-0 in the  79th minute. Substitute Nori Mohammad slammed two in the 82nd and 83rd  minutes to complete the rout.<\/p>\n<p>Iran laboured to a goalless draw in  Thailand before winning two of their next three games. They defeated  Jordan 1-0, thanks to a Javad Nekounam strike at the Azadi Stadium in  Tehran but lost by the same scoreline in Amman when Amer Deeb\u2019s strike  separated the two sides.<\/p>\n<p>Afshin Ghotbi\u2019s side downed three-time  ASEAN champions Singapore 3-1 away with goals from Hadi Aghily, Mehrzad  Madanchi and Gholamreza Rezaei. Mohd Noh Alam Shah reduced the deficit  for Singapore.<\/p>\n<p>The defeat of Singapore booked Iran\u2019s ticket to  Qatar but they still had a part to play in determining which of their  three Group E opponents joined them, with the Jordanians earning the  second berth thanks to their defeat of Singapore and the Iranians\u2019 1-0  win over a Thai side needing all three points to have any chance of  qualification.<\/p>\n<p>Javad Nekounam scored Iran\u2019s winner against Thailand in the last minute.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; Three-time Asian champions Iran comfortably topped Group E, finishing the campaign a clear&#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-11524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3282,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524","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=11524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}