{"id":30645,"date":"2018-02-01T15:36:45","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T23:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=30645"},"modified":"2018-02-01T15:36:45","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T23:36:45","slug":"socceroos-struggle-to-lock-in-daniel-arzani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/02\/01\/socceroos-struggle-to-lock-in-daniel-arzani\/","title":{"rendered":"Socceroos struggle to lock in Daniel Arzani"},"content":{"rendered":"

FourFourTwo – MELBOURNE, The Socceroos could have a fight on their hands to keep prodigious youngster Daniel Arzani from playing for the Iranian national team.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reports have emerged that the Iranian national team – the highest ranked Asian nation by FIFA, who are also in preparation for the 2018 World Cup – are interested in calling up the Melbourne City midfielder.<\/p>\n

Arzani, for his part, hasn’t aligned himself with Australia, telling reporters that he wasn’t sure who he wanted to represent. <\/p>\n

“To be honest, I haven’t really thought about it at all,” Arzani said.<\/p>\n

“I’d have to talk to my parents, I’d have to talk to my father and we’d have to decide together.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got no idea.”<\/p>\n

Whether this is a ploy by the 19-year-old to fast-track a move into the Socceroos, or a genuine desire to play for the country of his heritage, remains unknown, but should a genuine call from Iran emerge, the Socceroos could lose on of their brightest talents.<\/p>\n

Previously, some dual-national Aussies – such as Chris Ikonomidis – have played for the Socceroos before making senior club appearances due to Australia’s fear of losing talent to other nations. <\/p>\n

Arzani is a product of the now-defunct FFA Cen e of Excellence and has played for Australia at u\/17, u\/20 and u\/23 level. <\/p>\n

Football Federation Australia’s (FFA) Head of National Teams, Luke Casserly, told Associated Press that the governing body has “invested” in Arzani. <\/p>\n

“We’ve invested a fair bit in him over the years,” Casserly told AAP.<\/p>\n

“It would be disappointing if he was to change allegiances. But, as always, it’s the decision of the individual.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FourFourTwo – MELBOURNE, The Socceroos could have a fight on their hands to keep prodigious…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":30646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92,140,89,91,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-iran-u19","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":3646,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30645","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=30645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30647,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30645\/revisions\/30647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}