{"id":32830,"date":"2018-07-20T15:22:23","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T22:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=32830"},"modified":"2018-07-20T15:22:23","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T22:22:23","slug":"anthony-stokes-joins-englishman-harry-forrester-at-iranian-club-tractor-sazi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/07\/20\/anthony-stokes-joins-englishman-harry-forrester-at-iranian-club-tractor-sazi\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Stokes joins Englishman Harry Forrester at Iranian club Tractor Sazi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four Four Two &#8211; TABRIZ, <strong>Ex-Sunderland striker Stokes becomes the latest recruit to the Persian Gulf League under former Wales boss John Toshack.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Stokes, formerly of Hibernian and Celtic, was a free agent and had been training with St Mirren under his old manager Alan Stubbs, but now he&#8217;s decided Iranian football is the thing for him. Most recently he spent an unsuccessful short spell with Greek side Apollon Smyrni.<\/p>\n<p>The 29-year-old had reportedly been offered a short-term contract to play for the Buddies, but instead he has opted for a more lucrative deal to play in the Middle East under Toshack. The ex-Real Madrid manager took the Tractor Sazi job in early June. <\/p>\n<p>English midfielder Harry Forrester also made the surprise switch to join Toshack in Iran on Thursday &#8211; just a day after being released by Rangers. With it, the 27-year-old becomes the first Englishman to sign for an Iranian club since 2015, following in the footsteps of Hackney&#8217;s Korede Aiyegbusi, who joined Meshki Pooshan. <\/p>\n<p>Boyhood dreams fulfilled for both players, FFT can only assume.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four Four Two &#8211; TABRIZ, Ex-Sunderland striker Stokes becomes the latest recruit to the Persian&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":32831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,164,136,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":1441,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830","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=32830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32832,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830\/revisions\/32832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}