{"id":11786,"date":"2011-01-04T22:29:18","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T06:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/01\/04\/irans-boss-evaluates-asian-rivals\/"},"modified":"2011-01-04T22:29:18","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T06:29:18","slug":"irans-boss-evaluates-asian-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/01\/04\/irans-boss-evaluates-asian-rivals\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran&#8217;s boss evaluates Asian rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" alt=\"ghotbi_press\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/ghotbi_press.jpg\" height=\"293\" width=\"399\" \/>PTV &#8211; TEHRAN,<strong> Iran&#8217;s head coach  Afshin Qotbi has evaluated his side&#8217;s rivals ahead of the 2011 AFC Asian  Cup, which will begin in Qatar this Friday.<\/strong><span id=\"ctl00_body_spnDetail\"> <\/p>\n<p>Reminding Iran&#8217;s 35 years of waiting to win the tournament&#8217;s title,  Qotbi said that Team Melli has the quality to claim the title and  history has always shown it. <\/p>\n<p>The Asian powerhouse is in Group D, which also includes defending  champion Iraq, World Cup finalist North Korea and the United Arab  Emirates. <\/p>\n<p>Qotbi believes Group D is the toughest at the tournament, saying  that the pressure is on Iran, the three-time Asian Cup champion. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have Iraq, which is coming here as champion, and they have the  confidence that comes with being champion and they have enough of the  quality players, who helped them achieve that championship still with  the team,&#8221; he was quoted as saying by AFP. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;North Korea will make life difficult for every team, just like they did for Brazil at the World Cup in South Africa.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>United Arab Emirates is the &#8220;dark horse&#8221; of the group, the Iranian manager said. <\/p>\n<p>Iran takes on Iraq on January 11, North Korea on January 15 and the UAE four days later. <\/p>\n<p>Iran won the tournament in 1968, 1972 and 1976, but crashed out disappointingly in 2007 in the quarterfinal to South Korea. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PTV &#8211; TEHRAN, Iran&#8217;s head coach Afshin Qotbi has evaluated his side&#8217;s rivals ahead of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":2792,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786","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=11786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}