{"id":21700,"date":"2015-06-01T12:36:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=21700"},"modified":"2015-06-01T12:36:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:36:29","slug":"andranik-teymourian-becomes-first-ever-non-muslim-to-lead-an-iranian-national-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/06\/01\/andranik-teymourian-becomes-first-ever-non-muslim-to-lead-an-iranian-national-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Andranik Teymourian Becomes First Ever Non-Muslim to Lead an Iranian National Team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DNA &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Armenian-Iranian Andranik Teymourian, a member of Iran&#8217;s national football team, has been appointed the captain, according to a report by the Guardian. This is the first instance of a non-Muslim becoming captain of an Iranian national side.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Armenian-Iranian Andranik Teymourian, a member of Iran&#8217;s national football team, has been appointed the captain, according to a report in the Guardian. This is the first instance of a non-Muslim becoming captain of an Iranian national side.<\/p>\n<p>Teymourian is not shy of showing his Christianity, often crossing himself on the field. In April, Teymourian, who has played for Bolton Wanderers and Fulham, became the first non-Muslim to lead Iran\u2019s football team as its permanent captain. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m happy that as a Christian I play in a Muslim team,\u201d Teymourian said in a recent interview. \u201cI have Armenian roots but I hold the Iranian passport and I\u2019m proud of that, I hold my flag high. I hope I can enhance the good reputation of Armenian people in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notably, when Armenia commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide this year, Iran allowed protests by Armenian Iranians in front of the Turkish embassy in Tehran &#8211; something that had never happened before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DNA &#8211; TEHRAN, Armenian-Iranian Andranik Teymourian, a member of Iran&#8217;s national football team, has been&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":21701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,91,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3228,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21700","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=21700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}