{"id":26176,"date":"2016-10-04T13:24:24","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T20:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=26176"},"modified":"2016-10-04T13:24:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T20:24:24","slug":"afc-president-lauds-iran-for-record-breaking-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/10\/04\/afc-president-lauds-iran-for-record-breaking-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC President lauds Iran for record-breaking performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>Asian Football Confederation (AFC) President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa has offered his heartfelt congratulations to Islamic Republic of Iran for producing Asia\u2019s best-ever performance at the FIFA Futsal World Cup after they beat Portugal on penalties to finish third in Colombia on Saturday (local time).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn behalf of the Asian football family, I would like to congratulate the Islamic Republic of Iran for their spectacular displays, commendable resolve and consistency throughout the competition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs articulated in our Vision and Mission, IR Iran have proven that Asian teams can not only compete but dominate the world\u2019s biggest stages. I hope that IR Iran\u2019s achievement will inspire more Asian teams to scale new heights in world futsal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIR Iran are now a dominant force in world futsal and their success in the FIFA Futsal World Cup Colombia 2016 is a testament to the culmination of years of hard work and commitment of everyone at the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the Round of 16, IR Iran produced one of the biggest upsets after eliminating FIFA Futsal World Cup Thailand 2012 winners Brazil, 3-2 on penalties, after a hard-fought 4-4 draw in extra time.<\/p>\n<p>Later, IR Iran became the first Asian team since 1992 to reach the semi-finals of the FIFA Futsal World Cup when they overcame a resilient Paraguay side 4-3 in the quarter-final.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the Iranians defeated their opponents on penalties, beating Portugal 4-3 after a 2-2 draw in extra time to clinch a third-place finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Asian Football Confederation (AFC) President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":26177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,88,91,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c15-futsal","category-c20-other-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":1285,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26176","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=26176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}