{"id":27321,"date":"2017-02-24T21:17:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T05:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=27321"},"modified":"2017-02-24T21:17:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T05:17:09","slug":"alireza-haghighi-dreams-of-playing-in-world-cup-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2017\/02\/24\/alireza-haghighi-dreams-of-playing-in-world-cup-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Alireza Haghighi dreams of playing in World Cup again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tehran Times – TEHRAN, Alireza Haghighi, who was Iran\u2019s No. 1 in 2014 FIFA World Cup, is currently without a team while an injury is the latest blow he has suffered.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Haghighi became the first Iranian goalkeeper to join a European club when he signed for Russian outfit Rubin Kazan back in 2012 although he failed to make a single top team appearance in an ill-fated two-year stint.<\/p>\n

He then moved to play for Covilho and Penafiel in Portugal before signing for Maritimo in January 2016. After having appeared to claim the starting job in pre-season the arrival of Brazilian Eduardo Gottardi led him to terminate his contract with the club.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaritimo was one of the worst experiences in my career. Fortunately there was a term in my contract which allowed me to leave the club but the transfer window was closed and I couldn\u2019t move to another club. However I had two offers from Portuguese teams but I didn\u2019t want to stay in Portugal anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I left Maritimo, Sunderland was the first team who offered me a contract as a second choice keeper but I was eager to have more playing time so I rejected it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the last week of December I got two offers, one from Championship side Wigan Athletic and another one was Port Vale in Championship. Wigan\u2019s second choice keeper who was on loan from Liverpool got injured and the club officials offered me a contract but at the end some tax issue blocked my move to the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of days later I was on the verge of joining Port Vale and I even signed the contact but then it was another misfortune. The club haven\u2019t got the permission to sign a non-European player as they had never signed a non-EU player before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not the end of the story as I took part in the training session of a Greek Super League side. Everything was going well and I was on the verge of signing a contact when I got injured in a friendly match playing for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeanwhile I had some offers from Iranian clubs Naft Tehran, Sepahan and Tractor Sazi but I can’t see myself playing in any other shirt except Persepolis.<\/p>\n

Haghighi, who has not been invited to Team Melli squad by Carlos Queiroz in the recent call ups, believes that he can play for Iran in the World Cup again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all this I\u2019ve not lost my hope. Now I\u2019m recovering from injury and I keep working hard in order to get back on the pitch. I want to return to Iran national team and play in the World Cup again,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tehran Times – TEHRAN, Alireza Haghighi, who was Iran\u2019s No. 1 in 2014 FIFA World…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":27322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,91,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27321","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"],"views":4134,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27321","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=27321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}