{"id":31152,"date":"2018-03-17T12:13:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T19:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=31152"},"modified":"2018-03-17T12:13:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T19:13:07","slug":"team-melli-starts-wc-preparation-with-win-over-sierra-leone-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/03\/17\/team-melli-starts-wc-preparation-with-win-over-sierra-leone-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Melli starts WC preparation with win over Sierra Leone [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tehran Times – TEHRAN, Iran national football team, known as Team Melli, defeated African minnow Sierra Leone 4-0 in a friendly here at the Azadi Stadium on Saturday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mohammad Reza Khanzadeh opened the scoring for Iran and two minutes later Ali Gholizadeh made it 2-0 with a long range shot that that the keeper absolutely should have kept out.<\/p>\n

Kaveh Rezaei was on target in the 35th minute with a header into the six yard and Gholizadeh scored for the second time just two minutes into the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a good match. I would like to thank Sierra Leone national football team because they came here to play us. It was a long trip for them,\u201d Queiroz said after the match.<\/p>\n

Sierra Leone sit in 98th place in FIFA rankings while Iran are the best Asian football team and 33rd in the world.<\/p>\n

The reports emerged that the African team came to Iran with just four main players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t care what others say. They want to undermine me,\u201d the former Real Madrid coach said.<\/p>\n

Carlos Queiroz\u2019s men prepare for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where they have been drawn with Spain, Morocco and Portugal in Group B.<\/p>\n

Iran will open the campaign with a match against Morocco at Saint Petersburg on June 15.<\/p>\n

Team Melli, meanwhile, face Spain in Kazan on 20 June before meeting Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal in Saransk five days later.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BgXZOULU9eE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tehran Times – TEHRAN, Iran national football team, known as Team Melli, defeated African minnow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":31153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":3141,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31152","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=31152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31154,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31152\/revisions\/31154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}