{"id":11851,"date":"2011-01-16T18:30:11","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T02:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/01\/16\/ghotbi-rather-play-s-korea-in-asian-cup-final\/"},"modified":"2011-01-16T18:30:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T02:30:11","slug":"ghotbi-rather-play-s-korea-in-asian-cup-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2011\/01\/16\/ghotbi-rather-play-s-korea-in-asian-cup-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghotbi rather play S. Korea in Asian Cup final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" alt=\"ghotbi_press_1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/ghotbi_press_1.jpg\" height=\"242\" width=\"331\" \/>MNA &#8211; DOHA, <strong>Iran football coach Afshin Ghotbi says he prefers to play against South Korea in the final game of the 2011 AFC Asian Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Already-qualified Iran will most likely play either Australia or South Korea in the knockout stage of the Asian Cup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI worked for five years in South Korea and I know many of the players from a long time ago. They are like my little brothers and I would rather play them in the final game,\u201d Ghotbi said.<\/p>\n<p>Three-time champion Iran has respectively defeated Iraq and North Korea in the group stage. The Persians are scheduled to face the UAE on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe match against the UAE is a good opportunity for us to test the rest of our players who have yet to play in the event. However I believe that there is no difference between all the 23 players,\u201d the 47-year old added.<\/p>\n<p>Iran won the AFC Asian Cup in 1968, 1972 and 1976, and Ghotbi claims that he is going to put an end to 35-year title drought.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to win the championship and dedicate it to all the Iranians,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MNA &#8211; DOHA, Iran football coach Afshin Ghotbi says he prefers to play against South&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3965,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11851","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=11851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}