{"id":26626,"date":"2016-12-04T08:44:05","date_gmt":"2016-12-04T16:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=26626"},"modified":"2016-12-04T08:44:05","modified_gmt":"2016-12-04T16:44:05","slug":"well-qualify-for-the-world-cup-if-we-defeat-qatar-and-china-morteza-pouraliganji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2016\/12\/04\/well-qualify-for-the-world-cup-if-we-defeat-qatar-and-china-morteza-pouraliganji\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;We\u2019ll qualify for the World Cup if we defeat Qatar and China&#8221;: Morteza Pouraliganji"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; DOHA, <strong>Iranian international defender Morteza Pouraliganji, who is currently playing for Qatari side Al Sadd, believes that wining the next two games against Qatar and China will seal Iran\u2019s fifth appearance in the FIFA World Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Road to World Cup<br \/>\nFortunately, we\u2019ve done a good job in the first round and we\u2019re currently at the top. If we beat Qatar and China I am sure we will qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia but football is not a predictable game and we must not underestimate any team.<\/p>\n<p>Team Melli is full of young talents who can easily play in Europe. I\u2019m sure if players like Mehdi Torabi, Milad Mohammadi or even me play in the World Cup a number of European clubs will show interest in signing us.<\/p>\n<p>Playing alongside Xavi<br \/>\nXavi is a world class player and has won everything with Barcelona. Apart from his on-field qualities, he is a true gentleman off the field and I am learning a lot from him. It\u2019s an honor for me playing at a big team like Al Sadd who has legends like Raul and now Xavi.<\/p>\n<p>Move to Europe<br \/>\nI had decent performances while I was in China so obviously I have some offers from Chinese clubs but I\u2019m going to gain experience ahead of the 2018 World Cup. If there is a way to play in Europe I\u2019ll take that but I won&#8217;t settle for bench warmer role at European teams.<\/p>\n<p>Al Sadd vs. Esteghlal<br \/>\nAccording to the draw we will face Esteghlal of Iran in the AFC Champions League playoff. Esteghlal is a club from my country but I\u2019m currently playing for Al Sadd so I\u2019ll try my best to have good performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; DOHA, Iranian international defender Morteza Pouraliganji, who is currently playing for Qatari&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":26627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,91,93,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":2426,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26626","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=26626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}