{"id":25367,"date":"2016-06-05T10:17:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T17:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=25367"},"modified":"2016-06-05T10:17:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T17:17:47","slug":"iranian-striker-azmoun-linked-to-benfica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/06\/05\/iranian-striker-azmoun-linked-to-benfica\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian striker Azmoun linked to Benfica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Press TV &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Iranian professional footballer Sardar Azmoun has been linked with a move to Sport Lisboa e Benfica professional football team, which plays in the top flight of Portuguese football, the Primeira Liga.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to a report published by the Persian-language ISNA news agency, the Lisbon-based team, which is currently the Portuguese champions and has won three consecutive titles, is trying to sign the 21-year-old Iranian, who currently plays as a striker for Rubin Kazan in the Russian Premier League and the national Iranian men\u2019s soccer team.<\/p>\n<p>Rubin Kazan has, however, set a seven-million-euro release clause for Azmoun.<\/p>\n<p>Sardar Azmoun has been praised for his aerial ability, creativity, and bursts of acceleration. He has been referred to as a young Zlatan Ibrahimovic.<\/p>\n<p>Ibrahimovic is a Swedish professional footballer, who played for French club Paris Saint-Germain, and captain for the Sweden national team.<\/p>\n<p>Azmoun has also been called the Iranian Messi by mainly British media.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Azmoun netted a hat trick for the national Iranian football team in a friendly match against Macedonia at the multi-purpose National Arena Philip II of Macedonia stadium in Skopje.<\/p>\n<p>The Rubin Kazan striker opened the scoring for the visitors only eight minutes into the game. However, 23-year-old Macedonian footballer Aleksandar Trajkovski, who currently plays for Italian club Palermo, netted the equalizer only after two minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Azmoun scored a brace in the 20th minute and completed his hat trick on the hour mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Press TV &#8211; TEHRAN, Iranian professional footballer Sardar Azmoun has been linked with a move&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":24265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs"],"views":2568,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25367","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\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}