{"id":20185,"date":"2015-01-13T19:35:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T03:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20185"},"modified":"2015-01-14T16:54:09","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T00:54:09","slug":"qatar-v-iran-dejagah-banks-on-iranian-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/01\/13\/qatar-v-iran-dejagah-banks-on-iranian-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Qatar vs. Iran: Dejagah banks on Iranian support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sportal &#8211; SYDNEY, <strong>Iran winger Ashkan Dejagah has called on his team&#8217;s fans to roar them to victory against Qatar in Sydney on Thursday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dejagah and Co. defeated Bahrain 2-0 in their Asian Cup opener in Melbourne on Sunday, with the vast majority of the 17,712-strong crowd decked out in Iran&#8217;s colours of white, green and red.<\/p>\n<p>The fans generated an exhilarating atmosphere at AAMI Park, which Dejagah likened to playing in Iran&#8217;s capital Tehran, and the former Fulham <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/content\/dam\/images\/1\/2\/n\/g\/d\/p\/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.12ndro.png\/1421134194595.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"433\" height=\"244\" \/>midfielder urged Sydney&#8217;s Iranian community to provide similar support.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course, it&#8217;s like a 12th man,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope the next game it&#8217;s the same and we can do them proud.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Iran will hope to capitalise on Qatar&#8217;s poor start to the Asian Cup with Djamel Belmadi&#8217;s men having collapsed to lose 4-1 to United Arab Emirates in Canberra.<\/p>\n<p>Khalfan Ibrahim gave Qatar the lead in Australia&#8217;s capital city after 21 minutes, but braces to Ahmed Khalil and Ali Ahmed Mabkhout saw UAE crush the 2014 Gulf Cup champions.<\/p>\n<p>Qatar has only reached the quarter-finals twice in eight Asian Cup appearances and will be eliminated if they lose to Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Queiroz&#8217;s Persians, by comparison, are looking to continue their country&#8217;s strong continental record that includes three titles (1968, 1972, 1976).<\/p>\n<p>Iran was impressive against Bahrain with Dejagah, Reza Ghoochannejhad, Ehsan Hajsafi and Masoud Shojaei providing a fine combination of power and skill in the final third while Queiroz&#8217;s men also looked solid in defence.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhat surprisingly, Qatar&#8217;s back four struggled against UAE, as Belmadi&#8217;s team had won the Gulf Cup due to their tight defensive set-up.<\/p>\n<p>Qatar drew their three group matches in Saudi Arabia, including scoreless stalemates against Yemen and Bahrain, before growing in confidence in the knockout stage, defeating Oman 3-1 in the semi-finals and the hosts 2-1 to lift the trophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sportal &#8211; SYDNEY, Iran winger Ashkan Dejagah has called on his team&#8217;s fans to roar&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":20186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":4677,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20185","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\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}