{"id":24939,"date":"2016-04-17T16:34:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T23:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=24939"},"modified":"2016-04-17T16:34:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T23:34:39","slug":"irans-world-cup-qualifying-group-is-not-easy-igor-stimac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/04\/17\/irans-world-cup-qualifying-group-is-not-easy-igor-stimac\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Iran&#8217;s World Cup qualifying group is not easy&#8221;: Igor Stimac"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; ISFAHAN, <strong>Sepahan head coach Igor Stimac believes that Iran\u2019s rivals at the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying are not easy and Queiroz men should take them seriously.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Queiroz\u2019s men have been drawn in Group A of the third round of the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification tournament, which is scheduled to start early September this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChina and Qatar have been invested a lot in football in recent years and they could make trouble for Iran and Team Melli must not underestimate them. Syria has not been a serious rival for Iran but this doesn\u2019t mean that you could understimate the team,\u201d Stimac said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUzbekistan and South Korea are dangerous teams. We are in the same group with Uzbek team (Lokomotiv Tashkent) at AFC Asian Champions League. They have a couple national players and are physically strong. Their style of play is similar to Russians and Iran should take them serious,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe faced South Korea twice when I was in charge of Croatia national team. Despite winning both games South Koreans put us under pressure as they were a disciplined team. No matter it is a friendly game or a World Cup qualifier they fight until the final second,\u201d former Croatia coach added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIran could make it to the final round of the World Cup for the second time in a row but they should take their opponents serious,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; ISFAHAN, Sepahan head coach Igor Stimac believes that Iran\u2019s rivals at the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":24940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":2176,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24939","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=24939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}