{"id":28888,"date":"2017-08-27T09:51:47","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T16:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=28888"},"modified":"2017-08-27T09:56:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-27T16:56:27","slug":"ghoddos-ahead-of-iran-debut-as-team-melli-list-is-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2017\/08\/27\/ghoddos-ahead-of-iran-debut-as-team-melli-list-is-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghoddos ahead of Iran debut as Team Melli list is announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Persianfootball.com – TEHRAN, One of the most anticipated Team Melli rosters was announced today – despite Iran having two almost meaningless World Cup qualifiers ahead – and it wasn’t short of surprises.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Iran have already qualified for next year’s World Cup with two games in hand and no goals conceded yet and now will face archrivals South Korea and war-torn Syria in the final matches.<\/p>\n

Still the announcement of the Iran squad was nervously awaited by fans, mainly due to two factors. The first being the possible invitation of \u00d6stersund shooting star Saman Ghoddos, the second the fate of the Panionios Athens duo, who played against an Israeli team in UEFA Europa League, following some political hardliners in Iran demanding their suspension, which received world wide coverage with many premature claims the duo would be banned.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Ghoddos, a 23-year-old Sweden-born offensive allrounder of Iranian descent, was invited by Queiroz and might debut for Iran this week. The powerful right-footer scored 13 goals and assisted 10 more in 27 games for \u00d6stersund in all competitions this season and might enforce Iran’s already often impressive attacking force even further.<\/p>\n

In regards to the Greek based duo, the outcome was quite surprising. While Ehsan Hajsafi was invited, Masoud Shojaei was excluded from the squad. Iran boss Carlos Queiroz explained the veteran playmaker might well be invited after the two upcoming games though. Anyhow, the speculations about a suspension of the two players should be proven untrue by Hajsafi’s inclusion already.<\/p>\n

Else the exclusion of veteran defender Pejman Montazeri and Charleroi striker Kaveh Rezaei as well as the invitation of clubless midfielders Ashkan Dejagah and Ali Karimi might raise some eyebrows. No surprise was the return of in-form goalkeeper Alireza Haghighi, who impressed a lot in Swedish topflight in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Below comes the full squad.<\/p>\n

Goalkeepers:<\/strong>
\nAlireza Beiranvand – Persepolis
\nHamed Lak – Foolad
\nAlireza Haghighi – AFC Eskilstuna, SWE<\/p>\n

Defenders:<\/strong>
\nVouria Ghafoori – Esteghlal Tehran
\nRoozbeh Cheshmi – Esteghlal Tehran
\nSeyed Jalal Hosseini – Persepolis
\nMohamad Ansari – Persepolis
\nSaeid Aghaei- Sepahan
\nRamin Rezaeian – KV Oostende, BEL
\nMorteza Pouraliganji – Al Sadd SC, QAT
\nMilad Mohammadi – Akhmat Grozny, RUS<\/p>\n

Midfielders:<\/strong>
\nOmid Noorafkan – Esteghlal Tehran
\nSaeid Ezatollahi- FK Rostov, RUS
\nEhsan Hajsafi – Panionios Athens, GRE
\nAli Karimi – free agent
\nAshkan Dejagah – free agent<\/p>\n

Forwards:<\/strong>
\nMehdi Torabi – Saipa
\nVahid Amiri – Persepolis
\nMehdi Taremi – Persepolis
\nAlireza Jahanbakhsh – AZ Alkmaar, NED
\nReza Ghoochannejhad – SC Heerenveen, NED
\nKarim Ansarifard – Olympiacos, GRE
\nSardar Azmoun – Rubin Kazan, RUS
\nSaman Ghoddos – \u00d6stersunds FK, SWE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Persianfootball.com – TEHRAN, One of the most anticipated Team Melli rosters was announced today –…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":28848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":7282,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28888","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\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}