{"id":16151,"date":"2013-10-12T02:51:12","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T09:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=16151"},"modified":"2013-10-12T11:09:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-12T18:09:44","slug":"beitashour-very-motivated-to-play-for-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2013\/10\/12\/beitashour-very-motivated-to-play-for-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Beitashour very motivated to play for Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Steven &#8220;Mehrdad&#8221; Beitashour said on Saturday that he can&#8217;t wait to get started playing for Iran football team.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>San Jose Earthquakes right back accepted call-up to Iranian national football team for Asian Cup qualifier. The match has been scheduled for October 15 in Tehran&#8217;s Azadi Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>Beitashour has yet to make an international appearance for any nation. He was called by Jurgen Klinsmann to the U.S. national team ahead of its friendly against Mexico in August of 2012, but did not appear in the match. He was recalled for this past January&#8217;s friendly vs. Canada, but was forced to withdraw due to injury.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so happy to be here. Klinsmann invited me to the U.S. football team but I didn\u2019t play. I would rather play for Iran football team,\u201d Beitashour said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy parents are Iranian and I know about Iran football. I\u2019m very motivated to play for my motherland team. I\u2019d like to play a strong team such as Italy, Germany or Brazil in the 2014 World Cup,\u201d the 26-year-old added.<\/p>\n<p>In two previous Asian Cup qualifying matches, the Carlos Queiroz\u2019s team defeated Lebanon 5-0 and was held to a 1-1 draw against Kuwait.<\/p>\n<p>The top two teams in the group join Australia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea in the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Steven &#8220;Mehrdad&#8221; Beitashour said on Saturday that he can&#8217;t wait to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":2967,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151","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=16151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}