{"id":27877,"date":"2017-04-26T17:06:20","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T00:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=27877"},"modified":"2017-04-26T17:06:20","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T00:06:20","slug":"iran-ready-to-fly-the-flag-for-asia-at-fifa-beach-soccer-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2017\/04\/26\/iran-ready-to-fly-the-flag-for-asia-at-fifa-beach-soccer-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran ready to fly the flag for Asia at FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; NASSAU,<strong> As sixteen of the world\u2019s best beach soccer teams converge on the Bahamas for the 2017 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, the-AFC.com takes a look at Iran at the global showpiece.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Islamic Republic of Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Group B (Mexico, April 27; Italy, April 29; Nigeria, May 1)<\/p>\n<p>Head coach Mohammad Mirshamsi\u2019s side booked their seventh appearance in the global finals by capturing last month\u2019s AFC Beach Soccer Championship in Malaysia, comfortably accounting for United Arab Emirates with a 7-2 win in the final. <\/p>\n<p>Iran scored an impressive 50 goals at the Kuala Terengganu event, 12 of them coming from tournament MVP Mohammad Mokhtari, and they are now targeting a FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup semi-final appearance after reaching the last eight in the two previous tournaments.<\/p>\n<p>On both occasions, Iran\u2019s competition came to an end in narrow defeats to teams which went on to reach the final. In 2013 they lost 6-5 to eventual champions Russia, while two years ago in Portugal they were eliminated 5-4 by a Tahiti side which fell only to the host nation. It is a measure of IR Iran\u2019s progress that they defeated both sides at last November\u2019s Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Iran\u2019s group in Nassau is manageable, but by no means easy; Italy are fourth in the world rankings, while Mexico and Nigeria both finished as runners-up in their respective continental championships.<\/p>\n<p>They begin their campaign against a Mexican side that they beat 3-2 at the same stage of the 2015 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, before meeting the highly-rated Italians two days later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; NASSAU, As sixteen of the world\u2019s best beach soccer teams converge on the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":27878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,84,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-soccer","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":5587,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27877","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=27877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}