{"id":11768,"date":"2011-01-02T10:17:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T18:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/01\/02\/nekounam-japan-and-s-korea-are-favorites\/"},"modified":"2011-01-02T10:17:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T18:17:00","slug":"nekounam-japan-and-s-korea-are-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/01\/02\/nekounam-japan-and-s-korea-are-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"Nekounam: Japan and S. Korea are favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" alt=\"neko_vs_dpr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/neko_vs_dpr.jpg\" height=\"275\" width=\"399\" \/>MNA &#8211; DOHA, <strong>Iran captain Javad Nekounam said that Japan and South Korea are the most favorite teams to win the 2011 AFC Asian Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Asian Cup will be held in Doha from January 7 to 29 with participation of 16 teams.<\/p>\n<p>Iran has been grouped along with defending champions Iraq, North Korea and the UAE in Group D.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJapan and South Korea as two Asian powerhouses are favorite to win the title but Australia and Iran have chance to claim the championship as well,\u201d Nekounam said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have been drawn in a difficult group and just think about advancing to the knockout stage. Iraq will take part in the event as the defending champion. North Korea has always been a respectable team and the UAE has a new investment in football and can be a dangerous team,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>In answer to the question that he will stay in Osasuna or will join another team in the winter transfer window, Nekounam said, \u201cAs I\u2019ve always said I like to continue my career in Osasuna but nobody knows what is going to happen next,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n<p>Iran, who is gearing up for the Asian Cup, will play a friendly against Angola on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MNA &#8211; DOHA, Iran captain Javad Nekounam said that Japan and South Korea are the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":3866,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11768","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=11768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}