{"id":12752,"date":"2012-02-18T17:48:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-19T01:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/02\/18\/ivankovic-prevented-from-entering-iran\/"},"modified":"2012-02-18T17:48:54","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T01:48:54","slug":"ivankovic-prevented-from-entering-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/02\/18\/ivankovic-prevented-from-entering-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivankovic prevented from entering Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 10px; float: right;\" alt=\"Branko22feb2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Branko22feb2.jpg\" height=\"312\" width=\"370\" \/>GOAL &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Al Ettifaq will be without manager Branko Ivankovic for their crucial Asian Champions League qualifier against Esteghlal after he was prevented from making the trip over what appears to be a politically-tinged dispute.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>In apparent retaliation for similar treatment received by Esteghlal the last time they played in Saudi Arabia, Al Ettifaq members and team staff were detained upon their arrival at Tehran&#8217;s Imam Khomeini International airport and fingerprinted.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Ivankovic himself didn&#8217;t travel at all, reportedly because Iranian authorities are seeking unpaid taxes totalling over \u20ac200,000. The 57-year-old was previously the coach of the Iran national team, leading them to a third-place finish in the 2004 Asian Cup as well as a successful qualification for the 2006 World Cup finals.<\/p>\n<p>The Iranian government attempted to replace the popular Ivankovic with a native coach before the tournament and their manoeuvres to fire him after the tournament caused Fifa to suspend the federation for political interference. <\/p>\n<p>While the IFF complained to Fifa over Ivankovic&#8217;s failure to return to Iran with two months remaining in his contract, the coach filed a successful counter-complaint over unpaid bonuses of over \u20ac400,000; the IFF&#8217;s appeal is still pending in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).<\/p>\n<p>The winner of Saturday&#8217;s match will join Qatar&#8217;s Al Rayyan, Uzbekistan&#8217;s Nasaf, and the UAE&#8217;s Al Jazira in Group A of the ACL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GOAL &#8211; TEHRAN, Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Al Ettifaq will be without manager Branko Ivankovic for their&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":12751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":3192,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12752","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=12752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}