{"id":24327,"date":"2016-02-13T20:27:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T04:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=24327"},"modified":"2016-02-13T20:27:40","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T04:27:40","slug":"afc-futsal-championship-2016-md3-iraq-vs-iran-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/02\/13\/afc-futsal-championship-2016-md3-iraq-vs-iran-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC Futsal Championship 2016 MD3: Iraq vs. Iran [Preview]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TASHKENT, <strong>Iran coach Mohammad Nazemosharie is intent on keeping up his side\u2019s winning momentum at the AFC Futsal Championship as the 10-time champions face Iraq on Sunday to decide the Group B winners.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While both nations have won their opening two matches it\u2019s Iran who top the standings thanks to a superior goal difference meaning Iraq must win if they are to claim top spot in the section.<\/p>\n<p>Host nation Uzbekistan \u2013 with their raucous support \u2013 have already booked top spot in Group A meaning whoever loses between Iraq and Iran will face a daunting quarter-final matchup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNaturally, we should continue our progress as we\u2019ve been doing,\u201d said Nazemosharie (pictured).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe always plan two matches ahead but we respect Iraq and know this will be a difficult match because there are some wonderful players in their squad and they have been growing match on match.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Iraq celebrated their dramatic 4-3 win over Jordan that booked their place in the next round with much gusto \u2013 and for good reason.<\/p>\n<p>This is just the second time at ten attempts that the nation has reached the quarter-finals and much of the recent improvement is being attributed to the establishment of a professional futsal league two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIran is the one of the best teams in Asia and we\u2019re thinking only about this match, not the future,\u201d claimed coach Haitham Abbas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur players are physically very tired and we might need to think about just how we approach this game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other match of the day sees China face Jordan at the Universal Stadium with both nations eager to go home with a win on the board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TASHKENT, Iran coach Mohammad Nazemosharie is intent on keeping up his side\u2019s winning&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":24328,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,88,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c15-futsal","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":2390,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24327","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=24327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}