{"id":25066,"date":"2016-04-30T17:19:17","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T00:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=25066"},"modified":"2016-04-30T17:19:17","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T00:19:17","slug":"azmoun-its-my-dream-to-play-for-iran-at-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/04\/30\/azmoun-its-my-dream-to-play-for-iran-at-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"Azmoun: It\u2019s my dream to play for Iran at World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; ROSTOV, <strong>Iranian youngster Sardar Azmoun, who plays for FC Rostov, had a dream of playing at the World Cup when he was a child. He is now very close to his dream and believes that he will give his best for the Iran national team to reach the 2018 World Cup in Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first world cup I remember watching on television was the 2006 tournament in Germany.  I was at my cousin\u2019s house in Iran, I was very young ten or eleven years old we were watching Iran\u2019s last group game against Angola which finished 1-1. When Iran scored I celebrated widely and I remembered thinking I wanted to follow in their footsteps. I wanted to play in a FIFA World Cup one day and score goals for my country,\u201d Sardar Azmoun told FIFA.com.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a child I used to look up players like Ali Daei and Zalatan Ibrahimovic, watching and studying them thought me a lot as a player. Ali Daei was a gentleman and he still holds the record for the most goals in international football. Ibrahimovic is also a great player and as a fellow forward he is probably the player I most want to play like,\u201d The 21-year old striker added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 2014 my dream of playing in a world cup nearly came true. I was in the provisional squad but I was dropped before the tournament. It wasn\u2019t a great feeling and maybe sad, I guess it wasn\u2019t meant to be. The coach knew what he wanted in his team and he recognized I wasn\u2019t quite ready that I still need to work on my game. To be honest that just made me hungrier to play at a World Cup; I believed in myself, I knew that I can play better and then I could develop more as a player,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo play for Iran is important to me; after I missed out in 2014 I started to think about what I need to do to be selected in 2018. Even I\u2019m part of the national team now I know it\u2019s not certain to be picked. I haven\u2019t reached my full potential but I as long as I continue to work hard I think I can establish myself,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike every player who plays for the national team I want to help the team qualify and do well. I want to play at the World Cup here in Russia and I\u2019ll give my all to be there,\u201d Azmoun added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; ROSTOV, Iranian youngster Sardar Azmoun, who plays for FC Rostov, had a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":25067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,85,89,91,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c31-pfdc-interviews","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":2360,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25066","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=25066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}