{"id":27114,"date":"2017-02-06T15:11:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T23:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=27114"},"modified":"2017-02-06T15:11:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-06T23:11:25","slug":"acl-2017-play-off-esteghlal-vs-al-sadd-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2017\/02\/06\/acl-2017-play-off-esteghlal-vs-al-sadd-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"ACL 2017 Play-Off: Esteghlal vs. Al Sadd [Preview]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>With a total of four Asian championships between them, the 2017 AFC Champions League Play-off showdown between Esteghlal and Al Sadd at Tehran\u2019s Azadi Stadium is certain to be one to savour with a place in Group A on the line.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the AFC Champions League era, Tuesday\u2019s hosts Esteghlal have represented Iran seven times \u2013 second only to Sepahan \u2013 although the two-time Asian Club Championship winners have not gone further than the semi-finals (2013).<\/p>\n<p>Like Esteghlal, Al Sadd missed out on the 2016 edition but the Qataris \u2013 continental champions in 1989 and 2011 \u2013 will be keen to return to the highest level of Asian club football. And with former Barcelona veteran Xavi pulling the strings in midfield, 2017 could be a campaign to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, With a total of four Asian championships between them, the 2017 AFC&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":27115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-iran-first-division"],"views":3966,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27114","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=27114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}