{"id":29851,"date":"2017-11-24T14:51:29","date_gmt":"2017-11-24T22:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=29851"},"modified":"2017-11-24T14:51:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-24T22:51:29","slug":"afc-iran-saudi-arabia-not-to-play-each-other-in-neutral-venues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2017\/11\/24\/afc-iran-saudi-arabia-not-to-play-each-other-in-neutral-venues\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC: Iran, Saudi Arabia not to play each other in neutral venues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) ordered Iranian and Saudi Arabian teams should not meet each other in neutral venues.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In March 2016, AFC had ruled the clubs from Saudi Arabia and Iran had to play each other at neutral venues.<\/p>\n<p>The decision was taken after two countries failed to resolve their political differences ahead of a deadline set by Asian football&#8217;s governing body.<\/p>\n<p>Head of Iran Football Federation Mehdi Taj attended a meeting held in Tokyo, Japan on Friday and protested the decision taken by AFC, imposing the ban on Iranian teams to play Saudi Arabian teams in neutral venues.<\/p>\n<p>Iran is surely the safest country in the Middle East as the country has hosted Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq matches in the recent years, Taj said.   <\/p>\n<p>Iranian giants Persepolis were forced to play Saudi Arabian clubs Al Ahli and Al Hilal in Muscat and Abu Dhabi in the 2017 AFC Champions League.<\/p>\n<p>Three other Iranian clubs Esteghlal Khuzestan, Zob Ahan and Esteghlal also met Saudi Arabian teams Al-Fateh, Al-Ahli and Al-Taawoun respectively in Oman. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) ordered Iranian and Saudi Arabian&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":29852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,164,136,165,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-persian-gulf-pro-league","category-uncategorized"],"views":1818,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29851","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=29851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}