{"id":20389,"date":"2015-01-24T23:23:58","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T07:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=20389"},"modified":"2015-01-24T23:23:58","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T07:23:58","slug":"appeal-over-ineligible-iraq-player-rejected-by-afc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/01\/24\/appeal-over-ineligible-iraq-player-rejected-by-afc\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeal over ineligible Iraq player rejected by AFC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Persianfootball.com – SYDNEY, Iran’s football federation general secretary Mohammad Nabi confirmed Iran’s appeal over the usage of ineligible Alaa Abdul-Zahra has been rejected by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iraq had eliminated tournament favourites Iran after penalties in quarter-finals on Friday, in highly controversial game during which the previously heavily criticized referee Ben Williams ridiculously suspended Iran’s Mehrad Pooladi in first half.<\/p>\n

However, Iran protested to the AFC over Iraq’s usage of midfielder Alaa Abdul-Zahra, who had been convicted of doping whilst playing in Iran on August 24, but left the country, apparently to avoid prosecution.<\/p>\n

The case had been passed on to FIFA and reportedly was simply not followed up by the Iraqi FA, who utilized him in the national team ever since.<\/p>\n

Iran appealed over Abdul-Zahra playing against Iran, claiming due to utilization of an ineligible player, Iraq should be declared losers.<\/p>\n

After two days of assessment, the AFC decided to reject the appeal, 24 hours ahead of the semifinal clash which Iraq will now play against South Korea.<\/p>\n

No official reasoning was given yet.<\/p>\n

Iran’s IFF are one of the federations with lack of influence in the AFC, led by Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa. The Bahraini took over from Qatari Mohammad Bin Hammam, who had to leave office after being found guilty of corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Persianfootball.com – SYDNEY, Iran’s football federation general secretary Mohammad Nabi confirmed Iran’s appeal over the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":14021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":3939,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20389","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=20389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}