{"id":20258,"date":"2015-01-17T21:05:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T05:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20258"},"modified":"2015-01-17T21:05:37","modified_gmt":"2015-01-18T05:05:37","slug":"iran-v-uae-japan-clash-looms-for-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/01\/17\/iran-v-uae-japan-clash-looms-for-losers\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran v UAE: Japan clash looms for losers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sportal – BRISBANE, Avoiding Japan in a potential quarter-final looks set to be the focus for Iran and United Arab Emirates.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iran and United Arab Emirates have qualified for the Asian Cup quarter-finals, but their clash on Monday is important for a different reason. <\/p>\n

Topping Group C is likely to be a huge advantage, with the second-placed team set to meet Japan in the last eight. <\/p>\n

Iran, who have been one of the most impressive teams at the tournament in Australia, sit second to UAE heading into the meeting in Brisbane. <\/p>\n

Carlos Queiroz’s men dominated Bahrain in a 2-0 win and overcame Qatar 1-0 in their most recent outing. <\/p>\n

Out wide, Ashkan Dejagah has impressed while Sardar Azmoun scored the winner against Qatar. <\/p>\n

UAE have also been strong, scoring six goals and conceding just two in their two victories so far. <\/p>\n

In Ali Mabkhout, UAE has a player who has scored three times \u2013 second most for the tournament.<\/p>\n

Attacking midfielder Omar Abdulrahman has been impressive, and he hopes to see his fellow forwards continue scoring. <\/p>\n

“Of course, I\u2019m very close to Ali Mabkhout and very happy that because of his performances he is the leading scorer for this competition,” he said. <\/p>\n

“We will work very hard to help them score more in the coming matches and hope that one of them will finish as the competition\u2019s top scorer.” <\/p>\n

The clash at Suncorp Stadium is set to bring the questionable surface into the spotlight once more.<\/p>\n

Patchy would be the kindest way to describe the pitch, which has come in for criticism from coaches and players. <\/p>\n

Humid conditions may also have an impact, but both teams will need to adjust quickly to a pitch that is difficult to play on. <\/p>\n

Expect Iran to dominate possession, but UAE have enough attacking quality to punish them as both teams look to avoid Japan in a quarter-final. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sportal – BRISBANE, Avoiding Japan in a potential quarter-final looks set to be the focus…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":20259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":3398,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20258","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=20258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}