{"id":23165,"date":"2015-11-06T15:55:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T23:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=23165"},"modified":"2015-11-07T01:29:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T09:29:58","slug":"former-iran-midfielder-ferydoon-zandi-hangs-up-his-boots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2015\/11\/06\/former-iran-midfielder-ferydoon-zandi-hangs-up-his-boots\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Iran midfielder Ferydoon Zandi hangs up his boots [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Former Iran midfielder Ferydoon Zandi announced his retirement from football on Thursday. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 36-year-old former Esteghlal Club player spent last season at the UAE\u2019s Al Ahli. <\/p>\n<p>Zandi, who was born in the city of Emden, in northern Germany, to an Iranian father and a German mother, started his career at SV Meppen. <\/p>\n<p>He has also played in several German clubs including SC Freiburg, Kaiserslautern, VfB Lubeck and TuS Koblenz. <\/p>\n<p>He played for Team Iran 29 matches and scored five goals. Zandi represented Iran in the 2006 World Cup against Mexico, Portugal and Angola. <\/p>\n<p>Zandi was invited by Carlos Queiroz for a friendly in May 2012 against Albania but he announced his retirement from International football before the match. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s the right time to hang up my boots. It&#8217;s the hardest decision I&#8217;ve ever made. I decided to call time on my career after struggling with injuries. I want to thank my family and friends who have supported me over the years,\u201d Zandi wrote on his page. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI enjoyed playing football but I want to apologize to my fans who were waiting for my comeback. Saying goodbye is so hard but I will come back soon,\u201d he added <\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ferydoon Zandi Tribute\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SVqZT4eu2t4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Former Iran midfielder Ferydoon Zandi announced his retirement from football on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":23166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,142,91,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-memory-lane","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3365,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23165","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=23165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}