{"id":33350,"date":"2018-09-04T17:50:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T00:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=33350"},"modified":"2018-09-04T17:50:28","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T00:50:28","slug":"azadi-a-great-place-to-play-football-xavi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/09\/04\/azadi-a-great-place-to-play-football-xavi\/","title":{"rendered":"Azadi a great place to play football: Xavi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tasnim – DOHA, Al Sadd captain Xavi Hernandez praised the Azadi Stadium atmosphere in Tehran, saying Azadi is a great place to play football in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Qatar\u2019s Al Sadd defeated Esteghlal 3-1 in the first leg of the AFC Champions League quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

Speaking exclusively to the-AFC.com, Xavi expressed his satisfaction with the team’s performance at the Azadi Stadium, adding that Al Sadd was much better than its host.<\/p>\n

“I think we did well but there’s one more game,” said the 38-year-old World Cup winner. “It could be just 90 minutes or it could even go to extra time. We don’t know; in football, we never know.<\/p>\n

“At least, we did a really good job in Tehran. It was a very good performance and I think we were much better than Esteghlal, especially in the second half. Also, in the first half, we could have scored at least one goal.”<\/p>\n

What made things even better for Xavi was the atmosphere at the Azadi Stadium. “It was an amazing atmosphere, one of the best that I have seen in my career. All the spectators were incredible.<\/p>\n

“It was a great place to play football in. I was really enjoying the experience; it’s something I really liked.”<\/p>\n

“We now have a very good team. This season, we signed good players, such as Gabi, Jung (Woo-young) and a number of Qatari players as well,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think we can compete with the rest of the teams in Asia for the AFC Champions League title.”<\/p>\n

“With a good result in Tehran, I think we are the favorite but as I mentioned, we never know what will happen in football.”<\/p>\n

“Esteghlal has a good team as well and it will come here to compete, for sure, because Iranian teams are really strong.<\/p>\n

“But I think we are confident,” he added. “We are improving a lot, especially in this season. We had a really good pre-season and we have big dreams when it comes to this competition.<\/p>\n

“We did really well and put a big step forward in Tehran but it needs one more game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tasnim – DOHA, Al Sadd captain Xavi Hernandez praised the Azadi Stadium atmosphere in Tehran,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":33351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,92,136,91,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-iran-first-division","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":1162,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33350","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=33350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33353,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33350\/revisions\/33353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}