{"id":34577,"date":"2018-12-20T21:33:19","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T05:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=34577"},"modified":"2018-12-20T21:36:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T05:36:47","slug":"hajsafi-iran-can-be-kings-of-asia-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2018\/12\/20\/hajsafi-iran-can-be-kings-of-asia-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Hajsafi: Iran can be kings of Asia again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AFC – Kuala Lumpur, Ehsan Hajsafi believes a hungry Islamic Republic of Iran will end their title drought at the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Iran\u2019s solid tactical performance was on full display at the 2018\n FIFA World Cup Russia as they come within inches of advancing into the \nRound of 16 for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Team Melli had a dream start against Morocco when they picked up their first win in the FIFA World Cup since a 3-1 victory over the United States in 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hajsafi, who delivered the free-kick five minutes into added time \nthat spurred the own goal by substitute Aziz Bouhaddouz, believes Iran \nhave come out stronger after Russia 2018 and are firm favourites to land\n the AFC Asian Cup title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\n is good understanding between the players of us achieving the same \ngoal. And I think with good experience we can get a good result and \nbecome champions after missing out for many years,\u201d said the 28-year-old\n left-back.
<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran, whose last of three AFC Asian Cup triumphs was in 1976, are in \nGroup D with Iraq, Vietnam and Yemen and Hajsafi, who has made 100 \nnational team appearances, is confident his team can advance into the \nknockout stage with minimum fuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith\n respect to the other teams,our strongest opponents would be Iraq, but \nwe are Iran and we want to become the champions so we do not want to \nunderestimate any team – Yemen and Vietnam are good teams as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs we approach the AFC Asian Cup, we are getting more information about them. And I genuinely believe that we can clinch the title this time around.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAll of us \nbelieve that we can win the AFC Asian Cup. Of course, everybody would \nlike to be the kings of Asia. All the players have special plans and \nprogrammes catered specifically for the AFC Asian Cup<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\n did very well in the previous edition in Australia, but we lost to Iraq\n on penalties in the quarter-finals. It will be different this time, and\n I hope that we will become the champions of Asia.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hajsafi, who plays for Iran club Tractorsazi, also called on Iran \nfans to show their support at UAE 2019, as they did during the FIFA \nWorld Cup in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope that the fans will continue supporting us like they did during the FIFA World Cup Russia.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I hope many of them will come to the UAE and watch us play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the opportunity to bring the trophy back to Iran and hopefully with the support from the fans, we can do it together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\n will kickstart their AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019 campaign on January 8 \nagainst Yemen at the Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium at Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos: FIFA via Getty Images, AFP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFC – Kuala Lumpur, Ehsan Hajsafi believes a hungry Islamic Republic of Iran will end…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,175,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-asian-cup","category-c47-featured-news"],"views":685,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34577","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=34577"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34582,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34577\/revisions\/34582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}