{"id":33779,"date":"2018-10-19T08:29:16","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T15:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=33779"},"modified":"2018-10-19T08:29:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T15:29:16","slug":"asian-champions-league-mahini-injury-is-a-blow-admits-hosseini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/10\/19\/asian-champions-league-mahini-injury-is-a-blow-admits-hosseini\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian Champions League: Mahini injury is a blow, admits Hosseini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Persepolis captain Jalal Hosseini believes the absence of injured defender Hossein Mahini will make things difficult in Tuesday&#8217;s AFC Champions League semi-final second leg against Al Sadd, despite the 1-0 lead on aggregate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Islamic Republic of Iran giants Persepolis will be just a game away from a first AFC Champions League final when they step out onto the field at Azadi Stadium against Qatar&#8217;s Al Sadd, but it is one who will not be in their ranks that is a cause of concern.<\/p>\n<p>Team Melli international full-back Hossein Mahini suffered a season-ending ACL injury in a league match against city-rivals Esteghlal at the end of last month, forcing Persepolis to put out a makeshift backline in the first leg against Al Sadd in Doha.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Not having such an experienced defender like Hossein Mahini in our ranks is a major blow for our team,&#8221; Persepolis skipper Hosseini told media.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are already facing a shortage of players due to the transfer bans in the last two windows, so it makes things tough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There is more positive squad news for the Iranians, though, as defender Mohammad Ansari and midfielder Kamal Kamyabinia are available for selection once again after serving one-match suspensions.<\/p>\n<p>Head coach Branko Ivankovic will likewise return to the dugout after he was also suspended for the semi-final first leg. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe defeated Al Sadd in the first meeting with a remarkable performance, but they have professional players and will travel to Tehran to beat us,\u201d added Hosseini.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHopefully, we can defeat a strong Al Sadd side on Tuesday and advance to the AFC Champions League final for the first time to make our fans happy.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; TEHRAN, Persepolis captain Jalal Hosseini believes the absence of injured defender Hossein Mahini&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":33780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,164,136,91,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-ipl","category-iran-first-division","category-c20-other-news","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":676,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33779","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=33779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33781,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33779\/revisions\/33781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}