{"id":31369,"date":"2018-04-11T09:52:27","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T16:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=31369"},"modified":"2018-04-11T09:52:27","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T16:52:27","slug":"team-melli-face-the-biggest-challenge-in-their-history-carlos-queiroz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/04\/11\/team-melli-face-the-biggest-challenge-in-their-history-carlos-queiroz\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Melli face the biggest challenge in their history: Carlos Queiroz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Iran national football team coach Carlos Queiroz says that Team Melli are facing the biggest challenge in the history, advancing to the 2018 FIFA World Cup knockout stage for the first time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Iran have been drawn in Group B along with Morocco, Spain and Portugal.<\/p>\n<p>The Persians will kick off the campaign with a match against Morocco at Saint Petersburg on June 15.<\/p>\n<p>Team Melli, meanwhile, face Spain in Kazan on 20 June before meeting Cristiano Ronaldo&#8217;s Portugal in Saransk five days later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been drawn in the toughest group in the World Cup. Morocco are the best African team and the team\u2019s results in the last two years speak for themselves. They have not conceded goals and claimed the African Nations Championship,\u201d Queiroz said in an interview with Khabar Varzeshi sports daily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpain and Portugal are also favorites to win the title. To book a place in the next stage is the biggest challenge in Iran\u2019s football history,\u201d the former Real Madrid coach added.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will play at the World Cup for our pride, that\u2019s why I am here and I believe that those who don\u2019t back the idea are the people who don\u2019t respect Iran\u2019s football,\u201d the Portuguese coach stated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us, to be in knockout stage means conquering Mt Everest. This is the highest mount in front of Iran\u2019s football and all of coaches and officials must take it seriously,\u201d Queiroz concluded.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Iran national football team coach Carlos Queiroz says that Team Melli&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":31370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,164,136,91,87,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-c20-other-news","category-c14-ipl-league-persian-gulf-cup","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":2255,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31369","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=31369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31371,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31369\/revisions\/31371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}