{"id":32653,"date":"2018-07-05T20:52:17","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T03:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=32653"},"modified":"2018-07-05T20:52:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T03:52:17","slug":"full-focus-as-uae-2019-fast-approaches-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/07\/05\/full-focus-as-uae-2019-fast-approaches-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Full focus as UAE 2019 fast approaches: Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong> Asia\u2019s best will head into the next six months with the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019 firmly in their sights.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Group D<\/strong><br \/>\nIslamic Republic of Iran<br \/>\n<strong>Previous AFC Asian Cup Appearances:<\/strong> 13 (1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2015)<br \/>\n<strong>AFC Asian Cup Record:<\/strong> Champions (1976, 1972, 1968)<br \/>\n<strong>World Ranking:<\/strong> 37<\/p>\n<p>Iran had a smooth qualifying campaign, emerging unbeaten to top Group A in the second round of qualification. Their only blemish were the 1-1 draws against Oman and Turkmenistan.<\/p>\n<p>Team Melli will be eager to translate their position as one of the Continent&#8217;s top teams by adding a fourth AFC Asian Cup title.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, Iran finished third in Group B, behind Portugal and group winners Spain. Although disappointed by their first round exit, Iran impressed in Russia, scoring a 1-0 win against Morocco, falling 1-0 to Spain before coming very close to defeating European champions Portugal, eventually settling for a 1-1 draw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Asia\u2019s best will head into the next six months with the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":32654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":1317,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32653","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=32653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32655,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32653\/revisions\/32655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}