{"id":24417,"date":"2016-02-20T09:21:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-20T17:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=24417"},"modified":"2016-02-20T09:24:39","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T17:24:39","slug":"afc-lauds-tractor-sazi-tabriz-keeper-akhbari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/02\/20\/afc-lauds-tractor-sazi-tabriz-keeper-akhbari\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC Champions League 2016 Key Player: Mohammadreza Akhbari"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>Before the excitement of the long-awaited AFC Champions League 2016 begins on Tuesday, join the-afc.com as we take a look at one of the competition&#8217;s key players, Tractorsazi Tabriz goalkeeper Mohammadreza Akhbari.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>KEY PLAYER:<\/strong> MOHAMMADREZA AKHBARI \u2013 Tractorsazi Tabriz<\/p>\n<p><strong>AFC Champions League Record<br \/>\n<\/strong>Appearances: 0<br \/>\nGoals: 0<\/p>\n<p><strong>PROFILE<br \/>\n<\/strong>Over the last 18 months, Mohammadreza Akhbari has established himself as one of the up-and-coming goalkeepers in Iran, a nation that has an abundance of talent between the posts.<\/p>\n<p>After starting his career at Saipa, the 23-year-old joined Tractorsazi Tabriz on a two-year loan deal ahead of the current domestic season in Iran and has continued to develop his unquestioned talents.<\/p>\n<p>His composed performances in goal prompted Iran U23 coach Mohammad Khakpour to make him his starting goalkeeper at the AFC U23 Championship in Doha earlier this year, and he was a key influence in the country\u2019s run to the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p>Akhbari\u2019s steady progression has seen him called up to the full national squad by head coach Carlos Queiroz and it can only be a matter of time before he earns his first senior appearance for Team Melli.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IMPORTANCE TO TEAM<br \/>\n<\/strong>Despite his youth, Akhbari brings a calming presence to the defence with his impressive shot stopping ability, lightning reflexes and positioning prowess making the young goalkeeper an imposing final line of defence for Tractorsazi Tabriz.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ONES TO WATCH<br \/>\n<\/strong>Now into his fourth AFC Champions League campaign with Tractorsazi, midfielder and captain Mehdi Kiani has spent all but one season of his professional career with the Tabriz-based club. Forward Mehdi Sharifi joined Tractorsazi from club Sepahan on a two-year loan and the 23-year-old will be joined in attack by experienced Cameroonian striker Aloys Nong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Before the excitement of the long-awaited AFC Champions League 2016 begins&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":24418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,90,84,136,93,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-u23","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-iran-first-division","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c14-youth-teams"],"views":1983,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24417","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=24417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}