{"id":33823,"date":"2018-10-23T00:41:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T07:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=33823"},"modified":"2018-10-23T00:41:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T07:41:42","slug":"persepolis-ready-for-tough-match-against-al-sadd-branko-ivankovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/10\/23\/persepolis-ready-for-tough-match-against-al-sadd-branko-ivankovic\/","title":{"rendered":"Persepolis ready for tough match against Al Sadd: Branko Ivankovic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Persepolis football team coach Branko Ivankovic knows well about the difficult match against Qatari giants Al Sadd in Tehran on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Iranian side will host Al Sadd in Tehran\u2019s Azadi Stadium in the second leg of the AFC Champions League semi-finals.<\/p>\n<p>Persepolis secured a 1-0 win despite enjoying just 33 percent of play and having only two shots on target in early October in Doha.<\/p>\n<p>No team from Iran have ever won the title, meanwhile, with runners-up finishes for Sepahan in 2007 and Zob Ahan in 2010 the closest the country has come to continental glory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst, I have to say this is a great honor for us to be here in the competition\u2019s semi-final. We have booked a place in last four for the second successive year. We met Al Sadd in group stage and it shows how difficult our group was,\u201d Ivankovic said in the pre-match news conference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe expect a beautiful performance against Al Sadd. Our fans have always supported us and they will be supportive on Tuesday once again. We want to make our fans happy because we play for them,\u201d the Croat added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAl Sadd are a strong team with Spanish stars Xavi, Gabi and Algerian Baghdad Bounedjah as well as eight Qatari national team players. We \u2018ve analyzed the way they defeated Esteghlal in Tehran and it proves that we have a difficult match against them. Persepolis\u2019 players know that they will have another 90 minutes ahead of them,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have the utmost confidence in my players and they are fit for the match. They understand how important is reaching the final. I am proud of them because being here is a big achievement so far. It is important they enjoy what they are doing,\u201d Ivankovic added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI invite our fans to come to the stadium to enjoy a beautiful match and create an atmosphere of good sportsmanship against Al Sadd,\u201d Ivankovic concluded.<\/p>\n<h6>Reported by Masoud Hossein<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Persepolis football team coach Branko Ivankovic knows well about the difficult&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33824,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":837,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33823","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33825,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33823\/revisions\/33825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}