{"id":34033,"date":"2018-11-07T11:57:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T19:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=34033"},"modified":"2018-11-07T11:57:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T19:57:56","slug":"afc-u23-championship-journey-to-thailand-2020-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/11\/07\/afc-u23-championship-journey-to-thailand-2020-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"AFC U23 Championship: Journey to Thailand 2020 begins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>The journey to the AFC U23 Championship Thailand 2020 Qualifiers has begun following the official draw ceremony at the AFC House on Wednesday. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Draw divided the 44 participating teams into two zones of WEST (West + South + Central) with 24 teams, and EAST (East + ASEAN) with 20 teams.<\/p>\n<p>Qatar will host Group A as they aim to make their third appearance in the AFC U23 Championship Finals. They will face Oman, Nepal and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Group B host Bahrain will attempt qualifying for the Finals for the fourth time, as they go up against Palestine, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>Islamic Republic of Iran, the host nation for Group C, will test their mettle against Iraq, Turkmenistan and Yemen.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia, the 2013 runners-up, will be aiming to better their previous best result after failing to progress past the group stage in January. They host United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Maldives in Group D.<\/p>\n<p>Kuwait were among the first teams to participate in the first-ever AFC U23 Championship in 2013, and will bid to reach the Finals again when they face Jordan, Syria and Kyrgyz Republic in Group E.<\/p>\n<p>Reigning champions and Group F hosts Uzbekistan will begin their title defence against Tajikistan, India and Pakistan in Group F.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AFC &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, The journey to the AFC U23 Championship Thailand 2020 Qualifiers has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":34038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,90,84,139,86,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-u23","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-irans-u23","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-c14-youth-teams"],"views":710,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34033","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=34033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34039,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34033\/revisions\/34039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}