{"id":20241,"date":"2015-01-16T18:01:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T02:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20241"},"modified":"2015-01-16T18:01:02","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T02:01:02","slug":"asian-cup-iran-most-popular-team-behind-socceroos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/01\/16\/asian-cup-iran-most-popular-team-behind-socceroos\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian Cup: Iran most popular team behind Socceroos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian &#8211; SYDNEY, <strong>IRAN are winning on and off the field at the Asian Cup, with midfielder Andranik Teymourian declaring his unbeaten team are enjoying the biggest support at the tournament outside of the Socceroos.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Both man of the match Teymourian and coach Carlos Quieroz made special mention of their team\u2019s supporters after Iran booked a quarter-final spot with a 1-0 win over Qatar in Sydney on Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>Quieroz lamented the fact his team didn\u2019t score more, especially after having a lot of late counter-attack chances, and acknowledged they needed to be clinical in future games, starting with next Monday\u2019s top-of-the-group decider against United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will try and score more goals, because the goals could make the difference between a win or a draw,\u201d said Quieroz, whose side trail UAE by one on goal difference, with both teams on six points after two games.<\/p>\n<p>He dedicated Thursday\u2019s win to the Iranian fans, while Teymourian described them as the team\u2019s 12th man at their first two games in Melbourne and Sydney.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to thank all the Iranians in Australia supporting the team and the fact that we have the second biggest supporter (base) after the Socceroos in Australia,\u201d Teymourian said through an interpreter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an absolute privilege for the players.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Defender Jalal Hosseini said \u201cit felt like a home game,\u201d while forward Ashkan Dejagah described the fans as \u201camazing\u201d, acknowledging some had travelled from other Australian cities. Quieroz offered a polite \u201cno comment\u201d when asked if it would be good to see female fans allowed to watch the team play back in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Qatar coach Djamal Belmadi said Iran\u2019s fans hadn\u2019t influenced the game, but acknowledged their presence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut for sure it\u2019s better to have the fans with you than against you,\u201d Belmadi said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s good for Iran that they can have this support from the fans. It\u2019s always good far from your country, away from home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nice for them, it can help, but I don\u2019t believe today it was the major reason for our loss.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian &#8211; SYDNEY, IRAN are winning on and off the field at the Asian&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":3515,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20241","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20241\/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=20241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}